Positive reporting on QF, who would have thought it existed?

[thewinchester]

Reading my local, The Worst Australian (or the worst for short), and there was an article from their rarely seen aviation writer Geoffrey Thomes on QF and safety.

Ok, so the writers trip to Sydney and their Maintenance Control Centre was paid for by QF, so take it with a grain of salt, but its still a good article and is of interest to any hardcore aviation buffs who like to see what's happening in those corners we never get to see.

Ground crew keep safety in the sky

An alert pops up on one of four screens being monitored by Qantas duty technical manager of 747s, Paul Kjeldsen, who says: "QF 10 out of London has an engine anti-ice fault."

QF 10 is a 747-400 and the fault is minor, according to the manager
of Qantas' Maintenance Control Centre, Alan Milne, who says it will be fIxed when the 747 lands in Singapore.

Pg. 16 of the printed edition, or you can click here to download a PDF of the article (Warning 1.02MB despite compressing the hell out of it)

 

[SQ1]

Pg. 16 of the printed edition, or you can click here to download a PDF of the article (Warning 1.02MB despite compressing the hell out of it)

Strange link you've got there???

 

[Mal]

It is an interesting article that highlights a part of the Qantas operation that I hadn't heard of before. Finally some good press for Qantas! That's the type of article they need more often to help improve the public opinion of Qantas.

 

[medhead]

I haven't read the article yet, as I'm on iPhone. But the quote sounds like it could actually be an article that cast the maintainence workers in a good light and hence supports the union position about protecting safety.

I'll read it when I get a chance

 

[thewinchester]

Pg. 16 of the printed edition, or you can click here to download a PDF of the article (Warning 1.02MB despite compressing the hell out of it)

Strange link you've got there???

Article wasn't on their website, so a quick trip to the copier for a scan, send it to Adobe Acrobat to fix up the quality and size, and upload to Rapidshare for everyone.

 

[drewbles]

Article wasn't on their website, so a quick trip to the copier for a scan, send it to Adobe Acrobat to fix up the quality and size, and upload to Rapidshare for everyone.

I took the liberty of uploading it to my server for direct download.

If people want the pdf, grab it from here: http://www.icns.com.au/~drew/the_west_australian-2009118-ground_crew_keep_safety_in_the_sky-pg16.pdf

(just easier than rapid share and it's only a meg I'm sure my server can handle the load )

 

[SeaWolf]

Argh! This article is yet another example of the sloppy journalism at The West. It's nothing but a transparent puff piece for Qantas. I don't think it has done them any favours really. The sole piece of outside supporting information is a very brief reference to Air Transport World. The rest of the article reads as if it was written by the Qantas PR department.

Qantas has a lot to be proud of in their engineering department, but this article highlights the skills of their PR team, not engineering.

 

[Mal]

Qantas has a lot to be proud of in their engineering department, but this article highlights the skills of their PR team, not engineering.

Not dissimilar to many other news articles about airlines - Qantas and their PR department have been very poor at handling the media and public perceptions of them over the recent years. Perhaps that is changing.

 

[drewbles]

Argh! This article is yet another example of the sloppy journalism at The West. It's nothing but a transparent puff piece for Qantas. I don't think it has done them any favours really. The sole piece of outside supporting information is a very brief reference to Air Transport World. The rest of the article reads as if it was written by the Qantas PR department.

Qantas has a lot to be proud of in their engineering department, but this article highlights the skills of their PR team, not engineering.

"Geoffrey Thomas and Sandie Bertrand travelled to Sydney as guests of Qantas"

Yup. It's a puff piece. Would be nice if the worlds journalists (well most of them) still had integrity and valued accuracy over sensationalism. Unfortunately, headlines sell more than well constructed unbiased truthful stories.

 

[medhead]

Well I've read it now. Pretty fluffy

But I feel it might be a bit of a back fire, in future fights with the unions. Yep, QF are great at managing their maintainence. But the union just has to turn around and point out that all the management systems in the world are useless without competent staff to actually do the maintainence that is ordered via the system.

I don't know....

 

[SQ1]

I took the liberty of uploading it to my server for direct download.

If people want the pdf, grab it from here: http://www.icns.com.au/~drew/the_west_australian-2009118-ground_crew_keep_safety_in_the_sky-pg16.pdf

(just easier than rapid share and it's only a meg I'm sure my server can handle the load )

Good thinking drewbles

Cheers

 

[oz_mark]

"Geoffrey Thomas and Sandie Bertrand travelled to Sydney as guests of Qantas"

Yup. It's a puff piece. Would be nice if the worlds journalists (well most of them) still had integrity and valued accuracy over sensationalism. Unfortunately, headlines sell more than well constructed unbiased truthful stories.

Specialist aviation writers tend to be more balanced than the generalist journalist that has been sent in to cover a aviation story. I have seen interviews with Geoffrey Thomas where he still makes the point that Qantas is a very safe airline.