Qantas’ newish chairman John Mullen has emerged from the shadows with a predictably neat two-step: apologetic for past mistakes but still bullish. His message to consumers is essentially a promise: “Yes, we made mistakes. But hang on, keep holding your noses. Just trust us.”
Mullen was everywhere this week with his plea, speaking at the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), partaking in two magazine interviews, and penning an op-ed on “woke” in The Australian Financial Review. (All while busy — like his predecessor Richard Goyder — chairing his other ventures; Brambles and Treasury Wine Estates, and sitting as a director of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P.)
The chairman told the institute on Tuesday that Qantas’ aging fleet has a reputation for “crap” service and “should have been replaced earlier”, saying, “It means that customers are still not getting the optimum experience, whether it is the cabin experience or whether it is a mechanical [issue] on an old aircraft.”
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In another of his light mea culpas, he also had some fairly damning things to say about the culpability of the Qantas board. “Although management ended up probably getting half the blame, the board could have stopped a number of the things that happened,” he said in an interview with AICD. “They could have done, they should have done, and they didn’t.”
But then Mullen measured the leap of faith consumers had to take with Qantas to get things under control: “We need to have another year or 18 months of the new aircraft coming on to start to deserve the respect that hopefully we will generate.”
The proposed timeline of 18 months is “laughable”, one pilot told Crikey: “The new aircraft will only have just begun to arrive, if they are on time.” Indeed, not only will deliveries be slow goings over the next decade, but aircraft often take months to be brought into service.
“At least he is being somewhat honest,” another Qantas pilot said. “Someone finally is about the state of our aircraft — we could do with a lot more of that. But he hardly told the whole truth.”
Qantas also hasn’t ordered enough new aircraft to replace its existing fleet, significantly falling short while demand is soaring and supply dates are lengthening. The airline’s fleet renewal program has barely begun, with just five A220s currently in service, and the company has struggled to find pilots for them — as well as recruits for its training program. Eventually Qantas will get 29 A220s by the end of 2027, but they are replacing a fleet of B717s that have already been retired.
Qantas’ very first A321XLRs — bought to replace the fleet of aging B737s — aren’t expected to be in service until the second half of the year. The new aircraft can carry slightly more passengers, but only 28 aircraft have been ordered so far, leaving a shortfall of at least 40.
Delays at Airbus have also slowed the first “Project Sunrise” A350-1000s to 2026. The first batch of A350s and a further 12 B787s aren’t expected until 2026-27 to replace 18 A330s, which are already failing, according to pilots and engineers who spoke to Crikey. This is backed up by data on aircraft tracking sites such as FlightAware.
Qantas insiders say two of the company’s ageing long-haul A330s have been permanently grounded due to running out of “cycles” — the number of takeoffs and landings an aircraft can undertake. This is because the national carrier has been forced to bring the A330s onto domestic service to cover a lack of working B737s.
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But in the years leading up to 2032 — when the second batch of A350s is due to start arriving to replace the double-decker A380s — the big jumbos will be ageing just as the A330s and B737s are today. At present, the A380s’ average age is 15.5 years, meaning they will be at least 22 years old in 2032. These old planes will only cause further cancellations and delays, worsening the “crap” flight experience Mullen admitted to.
As one Qantas long-haul pilot said, “The problems caused by ageing A380s will arguably be worse because they carry so many passengers [485]. Any problem will be multiple and they are likely to suffer more as they age, as they are the most complex aircraft in service — they have more systems and moving parts, so more that can go wrong.”
Not all Qantas passengers are equal in terms of fleet upgrades either. Those flying international and on mainline routes will start seeing new aircraft, while regional passengers will keep getting second-hand planes. In Western Australia, for instance, Qantas is bolstering its fleet with 20-year-old ex-Jetstar and US A319s.
Now, pilots say, management is talking up replacing the oldest and most damaged planes in the Qantas fleet — its ancient Fokkers — with second-hand Embraer 190s from US carrier JetBlue, which would be duelling with brand-new E190s that Virgin now has on order. One pilot from Qantas’ Perth-based Network Aviation said the state of the Fokkers was “dangerous, just dangerous”.
Despite all this, many of the Qantas directors responsible for the dire state of its aircraft remain on the board, as is the way with Australian board management. Nothing will be done. There will be no claw-back of fees or bonuses — just the old corporate shrug.
In his speech, Mullen, like Goyder, also conspicuously failed to thank the Australian taxpayers for tipping $2 billion-plus into the company during COVID. Without that, Hudson’s fleet renewal would be impacting the bottom line — and its bumper profits, share price and executive bonuses — far more heavily.
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