Hi Alan
Good to see you and hope you holding up against all the uninformed vitriol.
Thanks for pulling QF group away from the brink. It would have been a great shame to see one of our Aussie icons disappear.
Unlike the other 12 airlines that have disappeared in the last 12 months alone and the dozens in the few years before them, and sadly several others likely to go in the next 12 months, QF stats say the company is back in profit and commanding excellent load factors on many of the trimmed routes. Great that QFi is in much better shape to survive even though competing against a number of state sponsored and/or low labour cost competitors.
You have been here long enough to be familiar with the “tall poppy syndrome” and know that Aussies are great “knockers” however you need to understand your customers very obviously have had and are still having a hard time coping with the various changes needing to be implemented to keep the airline afloat and hoping and praying QF doesn’t drop to the levels of the typical US domestic carrier.
I’m probably telling you to suck eggs and you already know, but I’ll raise it anyway, number one reputation problem is the call centre hold times are horrendous. I know that is to theoretically drive the self-service paradigm through the website, but many requests are not satisfied due to shortfalls in the software. So, cut through the middle layer of management telling you otherwise; you either you need to spend a heap of cash on fixing the website properly or significantly beef up the call centres in staffing and training (which is obviously lacking at some centres).
I have read about the preliminary plans for fleet renewal which is going to be needed fairly soon. Can understand you might be looking to maximise the usage of current hardware and holding your cards close to your chest any advantage that might be gained from awaiting the outcome of Boeing’s current debacles.
Hopefully you have got through a lot of the cost cutting measures phase, and ready for the next phase which from a customer focused perspective must be looking for the areas where quality of delivery has consequently dropped. Middle management needs a bit of a hurry up to make sure customer sensitive service targets are being met in parallel with the financial ones. Get onto all those contractors and divisions that are not delivering to expectations and set stringent measurable targets, firstly cleaning of planes and lounges, also priority luggage management, gate management of queues etc.
As the economy inevitably slows even further with 2019-nCov, perhaps think out of the box to boost/maintain load factors. Perhaps its time to reconsider standby fares. Perhaps copy your competitor with a more flexible fly-ahead policy even for people on Red fares with the payment of a token amount.
On a personal note I was pleased to see you carried through on a promise of delivering a few more redemption opportunities, but the QFF members are never going to be even nearly satisfied until you tweak the process to deliver a lot more redeemable seats and cut the surcharges. People will obviously complain when that means more points to be expended for the same flight, but at least there will be a seat there to claim.
Lastly, in all honesty, you need to move on from Neil Perry, regardless of motives and good intentions he is not longer doing the brand any good. Yes, passengers should be eating more healthily and the scientists are telling you what should or shouldn’t be included on long haul meals, but you are fighting decades of eating habits. Provide options to let them eat stuff that not good for them if they want to.
Cheers