Posted on 10/29/2011 12:03:51 AM PDT by naturalman1975
QANTAS has grounded its entire domestic and international fleet of aircraft and will lock out all staff involved in its industrial dispute from Monday night.
The incredible move, coming in the middle of a bitter dispute with staff, will strand thousands of passengers in Australia and around the world.
"We are grounding the Qantas fleet now," Qantas chief Alan Joyce has said.
This means:
* passengers in 12 planes at airport gates at the time of the announcement had to disembark;
* 64 planes currently in the air, carrying 7000 passengers, are continuing to their destinations, but passengers with connecting flights will be grounded and given other accommodation;
* an estimated 13,000 passengers will be affected in the next 24 hours alone.
The lockout will begin at 8pm AEDT on Monday, but Mr Joyce has said to maintain safety standards meant the grounding had to be effective from "right now".
"We are locking out until the unions withdraw their extreme claim and reach agreement with us," Mr Joyce has told a press conference.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
In before the Rain Man references.
Well, not flying is one sure way to avoid crashing...
Actually, a smart move on the part of the Quantas CEO.
The Unions have been staging “Work Actions” and wildcat walkouts for some time, trashing the brand and angering customers.
There really is no alternative for Quantas anymore, they control a huge part of the International markets, Virgin Blue(??), and Quantas’s own LCC’s aren’t nearly large enough to swallow the domestic traffic, and Air New Zealand has been cutting back it’s own flights.
This puts the ball, (And the blame) in the Unions court, now.
I wouldn’t mind being stranded in Australia, but I would be madder than “H” were I stranded elsewhere and couldn’t get home to Australia!
GOOD.
Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services. The world's oldest continually operating airline (since 1920 - KLM began operations in 1919 but couldn't operate during much of the Second World War). Depending what happens over coming days, that record could be lost.
Yah. Quantas appears to be playing hardball. Good for them.
Huh? Really?
They have to lock out the union to prevent sabotage.
Still a day to reach an agreement......
Sabotage?
Wow. Taking extreme measures. No retreat, no surrender! Kind of like the Marines. Maybe they should rename the company QantiCo!
Qantas is shrugging at the communist unions. Excellent.
They’re a pretty doctrine socialist movement in Australia. It is a leftist government even though they had to pick up some even wackier parties to form a government.
When leftists get that left, and think they have the upper hand (or are about the lose the upper hand), they can very well be violent.
Or at least that’s the way to bet.
You know, that's pretty good.
Here we go OCCUPY QANTAS !
My WW2 Dad tells me that Australian unions were sabotaging American bombers during the war!
sabootoj!
work slowdowns, delays, “sick outs” and whatever else unions do to hurt their employer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.