Going Straight to the Top to Get Answers

Going straight to the top

TO GET ANSWERS

BY MIKE BOWEN

QANTAS BOSS WANTS PERTH TO LONDON FLIGHTS BACK

On Monday 13th of December 2021, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan announced WA’s hard border – which has shuttered most of the population, cut off from the rest of Australia and the world with good and bad consequences – would finally come down on February 5, 2022. While almost nothing can be certain in these times, Mr McGowan has signalled that only an “unforeseen emergency” could change this timeframe. Like millions of other Australians, it is a date that Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has been waiting eagerly to hear. While international flights had resumed in other Australian capitals from about mid-December, Perth will be the last to allow in overseas flights. In a one-on-one interview with regular Irish Scene contributer Mike Bowen in late November 2021, Mr Joyce said he hoped to be able to resume their once highly successful Perth to London route by April. As well as the busy Dublin route, London offers direct flights into many other regional Irish airports. It will be an option that will appeal to the Irish community in WA and Australia as well as the general travelling public when making their plans to get back to Ireland to see family, friends and loved ones who they have been separated from now for two long and difficult years. – Editor

I was totally confused and frustrated after receiving hundreds of phone calls and emails, all looking for clarification on the rules in travelling home, to and from Ireland. Almost everyone said they were too scared to plan or book flights because the media were sending out constant negative messages regarding flight availability due to lockdowns and lock-out laws. This overdose of negativity that was being pumped out by the print and social media was enough to send any sane person into convulsions.

Left: Mike Bowen met with Qantas CEO, Irishman Alan Joyce to discuss international flights to and from Australia

To get clarity for all those who were also lost in the confusion of the negative mixed messages, I decided to ask Qantas CEO, Dubliner Alan Joyce, who is no doubt one of the busiest Australians around, for an interview for Irish Scene. Having met and interviewed him a number of times over the past twelve years, I know he’s a no-nonsense person and I will get straight answers to my questions. Despite the enormous pressures he faces in getting the ‘Flying Kangaroo’ back into the skies after the devastation and damage caused by the pandemic, I get a reply within 24 hours that Mr Joyce would like to meet. His office at Qantas headquarters in Mascot was to be the venue for our interview. I set off early and headed to the airport in torrential rain for my 9am flight and midday meeting in Sydney. The sad sight of seeing the empty Qantas check in hall in Tullamarine was scary and reminded me of the devastating effect Covid-19 and the lockdowns have had on the aviation industry. Empty check in halls equates to empty flights, and empty flights equates to vanishing airlines, giving me a stark reminder why I was heading to Sydney – get answers and some assurance from Mr Joyce for all those seeking clarity and who were anxious to travel again. I’m sure the receptionist at Qantas HQ must have thought this figure that arrived in layers of clothing to fend off the torrential rains that followed me from Melbourne must have been a wayward Arctic explorer. So I was surprised when I was greeted with “Welcome Mr Bowen, one of our senior managers from Corporate Affairs will be with you in a few minutes”. I was happy to hand over my overnight baggage and dislodge my Uggie bear clothing to show a more formal business attire. A warm welcome, a coffee and a briefing before our meeting. I was shown into the boardroom to be greeted with a firm warm Irish handshake. “Welcome Mike,” said Mr Joyce in a typical Dublin accent as he shook my hand. “I see you brought the good weather with you. I replied yes I did, I thought you might have missed the rain. After the pleasantries and a few laughs, we settle at the table to go through some of the readers concerns.

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Right: Introducing Alan Joyce to the Irish Scene.

MB Thank you Alan for taking time out of your very busy schedule to clarify some of the unclear messages that are clouding air travellers fear to travel. I have a short list of questions, from some of the hundreds of enquiries I received. AJ I’m more than happy to give clarity to those concerns. MB Is full vax required to fly Qantas International? AJ Yes there is, we do have medical exceptions, defined by a target. You can apply to our medical team to get an exemption and we have a requirement of a double dose full vax, before you travel. The policy for children is the same as the Australian Government, in some cases they recognize a single dose and we will do the same. MB Will passenger numbers be limited on international flights, and if so, how will that impact on the price of airfares? AJ We’re selling the full capacity on the aircraft and it actually turns out to be a very safe environment for people to travel in. We have only had one known case of Covid transmitted on an aircraft and that was back when the Ruby

Princess happened. As you are probably aware, an aircraft does have operating air filters that circulates from top down, which helps to push the air flow down further and everybody is facing in the same direction while the seats acts as a natural barrier. We are comfortable that there will be requirements to wear masks. We’re also comfortable that we can safely sell all the seats on board the aircraft.

In terms of the airfares, what we’re doing now is trying to put as many of the aircraft back in the air as we can to get our people back to work. I’ve said repeatedly over the last year, that our major objective is not to make money in the short term but to generate cash and that means that airfares are going to be very attractive.

Domestically we have Jetstar selling tens of thousands of $22 airfares and those are the lowest airfares that we have ever had, to get our people back to work. We have also did the same internationally, Jetstar had a sale for international flights and sold out 75,000 airfares, starting from $100 and they sold out over 24 hours. Qantas did the same, the airfares we’ve been selling to L.A. and London are equivalent price and in some cases less than they were before Covid, just to get

our flights up and running. At peak periods, if you’re trying to travel over Christmas and you’re travelling in a certain direction, there is huge demand and all seats sell very fast, so airfares do go up and you can expect that. For example if you’re leaving Australia going to London, the flights are very light in that direction and very full in the other, so you can get some very attractive fares if you keep to the right direction. MB How will be meals be served on international flights? AJ Very similar to prior to Covid. We will be opening up all the lounges. For example, I’ll go through the entire situation with you, at Sydney first class lounge has opened up and Melbourne the same. All of our Platinum and Gold members and anyone that qualifies for lounge access gets into that lounge. They will have to wear a mask at the airport and you have to wear a mask when you go into the lounge. When you sit down and to be served food and drinks, you can take the mask off.

Once you board the aircraft, you have to continue wearing your mask on board.

We had Neil Perry in here yesterday picking some new wines for service and we have added some new vegan meals on board. People will see a very similar service that they had before Covid, we will be serving the same range of alcohol and meals

We are also in the process of opening up lounges around the world. In Darwin there was a new pop up lounge, it was set up in a few weeks and that’s your transit lounge to get to between the U.K. and here. Just before Christmas we’re opening up the Qantas lounge in London, at the moment we use the British Airways lounge there. We’re also opening the Qantas first class lounge in L.A. – at the moment we use the New Zealand star lounge there. When we start flying back to Singapore,

we will be opening a business class lounge there, you’ll gradually start to see everything feeling like it was before Covid. MB I downloaded my vaccination certificate from the

Victoria Health site and put a copy in each of my

Irish and Australian passports, is that right or will we have to have a government stamp showing we have been vaccinated? AJ What will be a requirement in a lot of countries is, you will have to show that you are fully vaccinated. We’re trying to make it easier with the

IATA digital pass that we will be launching before

Christmas. It will allow you to upload the needed documents each of the governments that you’re going to require, it will make it clear what they are. The normal passport system will work, at the moment it’s a bit more manual. The vaccination system that we’re making is as automated as we can. With the new system, we will let you know a week before you travel what the requirements are, and again four days, also seventy four hours before you travel. We hold your hand through the process as you’re travelling to tell you what you need to do for the various countries that you’re travelling to. MB I assume there will be exemptions for the young and elderly travelling internationally? AJ There will be an exemption, as long as there is a supportive information that the elder’s health needs are different. With the young children, if they are under twelve, they can’t have a vaccine at the moment, they obviously have an exemption.

With children from the U.K and other countries where one dose is regarded as fully vaccinated, we recognize that. MB Will the Melbourne/Perth to London flights be reinstated? AJ Yes when the West Australian state opens up again. The Darwin service will remain in service until at least April. When Perth opens up, I intend to have that service back because that service works really well there. Hopefully by April we can start that service again, but that depends on the

West Australian government. The Premier said they will open up again when they get to 90% vax, so we expect that it will be open in February. MB Will the Emirates/ Qantas venture agreement continue? AJ Yes, we just signed the agreement to extend for at least another five years to March 2028, with a further five years extension on top of that and that should take us to March 2033. We will need triple

C approval and we are very keen – it’s worked very well for our customers. MB Will I be able to fly direct to New York from

Melbourne on Qantas as I did before Covid? AJ Yes we will be re-entering New York in early 2022, it may be late 2022. New York is very important so our intent is get New York back because our customers love it and we have a huge amount of traffic out of New York. Before Covid, Qantas put a 787 service on from L.A to New York, and it was always full. We can only pick up people coming and going to Australia. I often think Mike, if we could pick up local traffic we could kill it but local traffic is a lockout for us. MB I well remember flying to New York back in May 2010 for the tenth year anniversary edition of The

Irish Connections Magazine that had published the story/interview I did of yourself at the Irish

Embassy there. I think that, that was the second

A380 flight to the U.S. at the time. That was so exciting and easy, almost door to door. AJ The other exciting thing is we had just announced before Covid is that we were going to start

Chicago, which was due to start in March 2020.

Our intent now is to restart at the earliest end of 2022 or start of 2023, pending how the market recovers. That will be quite exciting for our

American customers. MB You told me back in 2013 that the Asian Pacific market would grow to be the largest in the world.

How do you see that now? AJ I think the big question post Covid will be the recovery in this region of the Chinese market, as the borders are still closed, so the Chinese can’t leave to go anywhere. The question is, when

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Below: Masks will be mandatory in the airport, the guest lounges and on board the aircraft

will they open up and then, given the political tensions between China and Australia, will we get the same number of Chinese visitors as before

Covid. It was the largest coming in here, bigger that the New Zealanders coming here, so a lot of markets depend on it.

For us it was relatively small before Covid – we had Beijing and Shanghai, we had made a decision to exit Beijing before Covid and we will only come back to Shanghai. It’s a small market for Qantas but a big market for tourism into

Australia, and I think everyone is just having to suck it up and see how the market comes back, because I don’t think anyone is sure when it will open and how it will recover. Also, will tourism have the same tension from the Chinese as other sectors, like the wine and fresh food industry? MB No doubt you will be sourcing other markets to fill that void. Is Japan high on the agenda? AJ One of the major things we’re doing is to make sure that we have other tourism markets. We are still working on having a Japanese operation up and running before Christmas and potentially building up further from there. We are very keen to grow our Japanese operations, I think the

Japanese opportunities are enormous. Qantas will be restarting the Melbourne–Narita and the

Sydney–Narita service again. We had a great

Brisbane–Narita service that brought thousands of Japanese tourists to Cairns and the Gold Coast.

So we’ll rapidly try to get back to those services that we had before Covid. We were trying to get a partnership approved with JAL but that didn’t happen, unfortunately the ACCC knocked us back which was disappointing. If that had happened

Qantas would have reset the Cairns–Tokyo service as JAL would have helped us sell that service.

Recently while in the US we talked about Chicago/

New York. Qantas sees huge potential in the

American tourist returning to our shores, as that would be very helpful in rebalancing whatever losses we might have from the Chinese fallout.

The Americans see us as one of the safest countries in the world to visit, so we are keen to break back into the US tourism market, starting in

April. We think it will be very big here, much as it was before Covid. MB Will there be any changes in the Frequent Flyer program? AJ The big changes that we made is there is 50% more Reward seats available on international and domestic flights. Then we had this big sale a couple of weeks ago of Frequent Flyer points and there was half a billion points redeemed in one day. On the first two weeks in October, we 2.7 billion points redeemed. One chap, a fairly industrious individual, booked 38 flights in the one day using his Frequent Flyer points. We will be making a lot more available and that’s one of the reasons why we brought back our A380 to make more premium seats available for people to upgrade going to L.A. and London. MB Alan, as we were speaking about the U.S.A., Paddy

McCarthy, the publisher of the Irish Examiner

USA, who is also on the New York St Patrick’s Day parade committee, asked me to ask you would you ever consider attending the parade there? AJ Yes there is a possibility that I might be there. I’ve never seen the St Patrick’s Day parade. If all the planets can line up for it, that would be on the cards. I’ll let you know. MB If the travelling public seek further information, can they access it from the Qantas website? AJ Qantas have a very informative website that is regularly updated. MB Thank you again Alan for taking time out of your frantic schedule to meet with me. I wish you and your Qantas family all the very best and safe flying. AJ You’re always welcome Mike, you do a great job for the travelling public and Qantas!

CORK WOMAN FIONA MAYERS IN PERTH: WHAT’S KEPT ME UP AT NIGHT IS NOT KNOWING WHEN – OR IF – I’D BE BACK

For the first time since arriving here, in 2011, Co Cork felt a long, long way away. There’s one image from the pandemic that haunts me. It’s a Google Earth photo of Qantas planes in the Mojave Desert, parked up on the compressed sand, precise in formation, sun glinting off their bright white fuselages. When the Australian borders closed in 2020, Qantas’s fleet of super jumbos departed en masse, bound for the Mojave aircraft boneyard, where they would enter a deep sleep. Return date? The chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce, estimated 2023, but the truth was that no one really knew. We were entering uncharted territory, after all. There was something so final about it. The planes that would transport me from Perth, in Western Australia, to my home town of Clonakilty, in Co Cork, for weddings and Christmases were now gathering dust in an eerie desert wasteland. I imagined the rows of empty seats in the darkened cabins, the deserted cockpits, the electric hiss of rattlesnakes outside. It could have been the set of a dystopian movie. Except it wasn’t. And from there my mind wandered further. What if all the commercial airlines servicing Australia went bust? It didn’t seem so far-fetched, not when businesses were haemorrhaging jobs and there was talk of a depression so deep, so dark that it would make the Great Depression look like the Celtic Tiger years. It’s basic economics, after all. Businesses need to make money. Fleets need to be maintained. Australia is only a day away. That’s the reassuring line everyone trots out when you’re moving here. True, you can be home in less than 24 hours by commercial airliner, but it’s more than 15,000km. As I watched the infrastructure we rely on so heavily fall away, it was like a drawbridge coming up between Australia and home. Every one of those kilometres stretched out in front of me, and for the first time since arriving here, in 2011, home felt a long, long way away. As a citizen here, border closures meant that even in the event of an emergency I could not leave without a special exemption. They were hard to come by; expat social-media groups are littered with horror stories of Above: Fiona Mayers says ‘Australia is only a day away. That’s the reassuring line everyone trots out when you’re moving here’. Photo credit: Corey James

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Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo aircraft in storage at Southern California Logistics Airport, in the Mojave

Desert. Photograph: Google Earth

people unable to depart, even on compassionate grounds. The lack of flights and strict caps on the number of people allowed entry to Australia meant that even if you could leave, there was no guarantee of getting back in. Over FaceTime, I reassured my mum that the borders wouldn’t be closed for too long, that I’d be home before she knew it. Relax. They’re hardly going to close a country for years... Everything would be normal soon, I told her. Normal. Normal. Normal. But I wasn’t so sure. One night, at the height of peak Covid mania – in the banana-bread-and-Zoom-quiz phase – I Googled sailing courses. It might be the only way out of here if everyone goes bust, I told my sister. We had a laugh, but I was only half-joking. But this month things changed. I woke up a few days ago, made a coffee and checked the news like I do every morning. And there it was: a video of the first Qantas A380 to return to Australia from hibernation. I watched as the giant of the skies cut through the fluffy white clouds and soared over the city skyline before touching down at Sydney Airport. After 593 days in the desert, and a stop in Germany for maintenance work, the planes were coming back. The hinges of that metaphorical drawbridge were being oiled. Cheers erupted on the news video as the pilots emerged to a hero’s welcome. Staff lined the hanger and waved little red flags. One pilot even revealed that he’d been working as a painter and decorator during the pandemic. It was a moving sight. For the first time in a while I dared to imagine landing at Cork Airport again, getting battered by the wind on the way to collect a rental car, and driving those narrow, twisty roads home. No need for sailing, then. There’s no doubt about it: we’ve been lucky here in Australia, especially in Western Australia. Our experience of the pandemic has been very different from the rest of the world’s; we escaped largely unscathed. What kept us up at night wasn’t the virus, it was the not knowing. Not knowing when – or if – we’d be back. Things are starting to feel different now. The return of the Qantas A380 fleet is the second bit of good news in as many weeks. In late October the Australian government announced that the parents of Australian citizens and permanent residents are now exempt from border restrictions. They’re still subject to the individual quarantine requirements of the state or territory they’re visiting, but it’s a start. If push comes to shove, they can get here. Australians can also depart now without an exemption, and some states have eased their quarantine requirements for inbound, doublevaccinated travellers. It’s important to add, though, that this easing of restrictions doesn’t apply to most temporary visa holders in Australia. There are tens of thousands of Irish people who have worked hard here during the pandemic, many of whom aren’t citizens or permanent residents. For the time being they don’t have the luxury of leaving and returning easily, and their parents aren’t exempt from border restrictions. But there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon now. Let’s hope it’s not too much longer before Australia really is just 24 hours away again – for all of us. It feels like the time is coming. Fiona Mayers is a marketing communications manager, writer and radio producer. This article was first published by the Irish Times on November 18, 2021 and is reproduced here with the permission of the author and newspaper.

OLD SCHOOL IS THE BEST!

Carl Holmes, the owner of Masonmill Cafe and Beer Garden in the Perth Hills (pictured right), revealed a connection with the Qantas boss during an interview with Frank Murphy on the Celtic Rambles show, on Radio Fremantle, in November. “I went to St. Mark’s School, it was great, actually I went to school with Alan Joyce,” Carl revealed. “We were in school together at St Marks Secondary School Tallaght, he was good. He was in a couple of classes higher than me, not from an age point of view, he obviously had a higher IQ than I did, he went on to head up Qantas, I went on to become an electrician. Its a great place, its turned out some great people over the years.” Alan Joyce revealed the importance of his schooling and education during a speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce back in October 2019, not long before the Covid pandemic started. He said his grandfather grew up in a tenement house with 30 people in the Liberties in Dublin. His father was good at school but had to finish when he was aged just twelve. His mum – who had TB – also left school at the same age to take care of her family. “That was that generation,” Joyce said. “They have, and always are, my inspiration. They were hardworking. My father had three jobs and my mother worked in a sport complex in Tallaght. They worked hard to make sure their sons got the education they couldn’t have.” Joyce said he was also unbelievably grateful to the Irish state for how it allowed him to continue to get an education. “If tertiary education hadn’t been free, my family couldn’t have afforded to put me through Dublin City University, the Dublin Institute of Technology and then Trinity College,” he said. “Its an amazing education you get in Ireland and its recognised around the globe. Thanks to the hard work of my parents and thanks to the education system, I had a massive advantage when I left college. Not only was I the first in my family to to finish tertiary education, I was the first to finish secondary school.” The same applied to his three brothers, Joyce told the event. His brother Maurice was an animator and director with Disney while his brother Paul was a graphic designer. “So they both use the right side of their brain, while I and my brother in Melbourne who is an actuary, use the left side of our brains. So between the four of us we’ve got two good brains,” he joked.

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MATILDAS MAULED BY ‘TIGERS’ IN TALLAGHT

Tallaght Stadium was the venue and setting for a contest between the national women’s soccer teams of Ireland and Australia back in September last year. It was the first game for the Matildas since taking part in the Olympics and the first time the two sides had met on the pitch. The 25 player Aussie squad were the favourites, with the Republic of Ireland’s women’s team coming straight out of a “horror streak” of seven defeats in a row. The Matildas arrived a couple of weeks earlier and during at least one of their training sessions in the run up to the game they were visited by the Australian Ambassador Gary Gray and his dog Ted. The September 22 international friendly game ended in a 3-2 scoreline for the visitors, who spectators said were “outfought” by their Irish counterparts. “It felt that they wanted it more than us, that’s not okay,” Tony Gustafson, the Matildas’ head coach said straight after the match. “We’re the Matildas, it’s in our DNA to always give 100 [per cent], to play the physical game, to be aggressive, to wear the crest on our chest and always play our best and it felt like Ireland wanted it more. I guess there’s a lot of learning from this, and when I get distance emotionally I’m going to have a lot of learnings, but right now it’s a big disappointment.” The headlines in the Australian media too made for unhappy reading. “Sam Kerr’s supermilestone ends in defeat as Matildas go down to Republic of Ireland” was a headline on Nine, while ABC News described the Matildas as “Defensively frail”. The game was aired on Ten. Vera Pauw, Ireland coach, was as proud of her girls as Gustafson was disappointed in his. “You cannot believe how strong Ireland is, what a fantastic mentality and a fantastic bunch of tigers we have,” Pauw told RTE after the final whistle. ☘

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