(Australia) Qantas @·AIRCRAFTUBE

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Qantas

Qantas Airways Limited is the flag carrier of Australia. The name was originally "QANTAS", an acronym for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services". Nicknamed "The Flying Kangaroo", the airline is based in Sydney, New South Wales, with its main hub at Sydney Airport. It is Australia's largest airline, the oldest continuously operated airline in the world and the second oldest in the world overall. Qantas headquarters are located in the Qantas Centre in the Mascot suburb of the City of Botany Bay.

Qantas carries a 65% share of the Australian domestic market and carries 18.7% of all passengers travelling in and out of Australia.

History

Qantas was founded in Winton, Queensland on 16 November 1920 as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited. The airline's first aircraft was an Avro 504K. The airline flew internationally from May 1935, when it commenced service from Darwin, Northern Territory to Singapore. In June 1959 Qantas entered the jet age when the first Boeing 707-138 was delivered.

Predecessors

Qantas' domestic "mainline" operation was originally established as Trans Australia Airlines in the 1940s and renamed Australian Airlines in 1986. Australian Airlines was bought by Qantas in 1992 and operated as a separate airline until 1996, when all domestic flights were rebranded as Qantas.

Fundamental structural change

The Australian Commonwealth Air Navigation Act caps foreign ownership of Qantas at 49 percent if it wants to use Australian traffic rights on international routes. The Qantas Sale Act, under which the airline was privatised, also limits foreign ownership of Qantas to 49 percent. Foreign airlines are subject to further restrictions under the Qantas Sale Act, which stipulates a 35-percent limit for all foreign airline shareholdings combined. In addition, a single foreign entity can hold no more than 25 percent of the airline's shares.

In August 2011 the company announced that, due to financial losses and a decline in market share, major structural changes would be made. Up to 1,000 jobs would be lost in Australia, and a new Asia-based premium airline would be set up, operating under a different name. It would also launch a budget airline, called Jetstar Japan, in partnership with Japan Airlines and Mitsubishi Corporation. The change become necessary because of losses in the airline's international operations, due to airlines such as Emirates and Singapore Airlines becoming more competitive and because of the deregulation of Australian international routes during the mid-to-late 1980s. Included in the changes were the cessation of services to London via Hong Kong and Bangkok; Qantas will still operate to these cities, but with onward flights to London via its Oneworld partner British Airways under a code-share service.

Qantas is attempting to turn around its international operations, which lost about A$200 million ($209 million) for the year ending June 2011. Therefore, on 26 March 2012, Qantas announced it would set up Jetstar Hong Kong with China Eastern Airlines Corporation, which will begin flights in 2013. No budget carrier has a hub at Hong Kong Airport, which had 54 million passengers in 2011.

Due to high fuel prices, intense competition and industrial disputes, Qantas reported a A$245 million ($257 million) full-year loss to the end of June 2012, which was its first loss since Qantas was fully privatised 17 years previously, in 1995, and led to the airline cancelling its order of 35 new Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, to reduce its spending.

Aircraft incidents and accidents

It is often claimed, most notably in the 1988 movie Rain Man, that Qantas has never had an aircraft crash. While it is true that the company has neither lost a jet airliner nor had any jet fatalities, it had eight fatal accidents and an aircraft shot down between 1927 and 1945, with the loss of 63 people. Half of these accidents and the shoot-down occurred during World War II, when the Qantas aircraft were operating on behalf of Allied military forces. Post-war, it lost another two aircraft with the loss of 17 lives. To this date, the last fatal accident suffered by Qantas was in 1951.

Since the end of World War II, the following accidents and incidents have occurred:

  • On 7 April 1949, Avro Lancastrian VH-EAS swung on landing at Dubbo during a training flight, causing the gear to collapse. The aircraft was destroyed by fire, but the crew evacuated safely.
  • On 16 July 1951, de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover VH-EBQ crashed off the coast of New Guinea (in the Huon Gulf near the mouth of the Markham River) after the centre engine's propeller failed. The pilot and the six passengers on board were killed. To date, this was the last fatal accident suffered by Qantas.
  • On 24 August 1960, Lockheed Super Constellation VH-EAC crashed on take-off at Mauritius en route to the Cocos Islands, Australia. The take-off was aborted following an engine failure, the aircraft ran off the runway, and was destroyed by fire. There were no fatalities.
  • On 23 September 1999, Qantas Flight 1, a Boeing 747–400 VH-OJH, overran the runway while landing at Bangkok, Thailand, during a heavy thunderstorm. The aircraft came to a stop on a golf course, but without fatalities. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau criticised numerous inadequacies in Qantas' operational and training processes.
  • On 7 October 2008, Airbus A330-300 VH-QPA, travelling from Singapore to Perth, Western Australia as Qantas Flight 72, suffered a rapid loss of altitude in two sudden uncommanded pitch down manoeuvres causing serious injuries while 80 nautical miles (150 km) from Learmonth.. The aircraft safely landed in Learmonth, with 14 people requiring transportation by air ambulance to Perth. Another 30 people also required hospital treatment, while an additional 30 people had injuries not requiring hospital treatment. Initial investigations identified an inertial reference system fault in the Number-1 Air Data Inertial Reference Unit as the likely origin of the event. On receiving false indication of a very high angle of attack, the flight control systems commanded a pitch down movement, reaching a maximum of 8.5 degrees pitch down.
  • On 4 November 2010, Qantas Flight 32, an Airbus A380 named "Nancy-Bird Walton", fitted with four Trent 972 engines manufactured by Rolls-Royce, suffered an uncontained turbine disc failure of its left inboard engine shortly after taking off from Singapore Changi Airport. The flight returned to Singapore and landed safely, and all 433 passengers and 26 crew on board survived uninjured. Cowling parts of the failed engine fell over Batam Island, Indonesia.

2011 industrial unrest and grounding of fleet

In response to ongoing industrial unrest over failed negotiations involving three unions (the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) and the Transport Workers Union of Australia (TWU)), the company grounded its entire domestic and international fleet from 5 pm AEDT on 29 October Employees involved would be locked out from 8 p.m. AEDT on 31 October. It was reported that the grounding would have a daily financial impact of A$20 million. In the early hours of 31 October, Fair Work Australia ordered that all industrial action taken by Qantas and the involved trade unions be terminated immediately. The order was requested by the federal government amid fears that an extended period of grounding would do significant damage to the national economy, especially the tourism and mining sectors. It is estimated that the grounding affected 68,000 customers worldwide. The unrest has been caused by the recent restructuring of the Qantas airline due to decreasing profits. Most of the airline's international routes are operated at a loss, with just the domestic services within Australia managing to keep the airline afloat. The three unions have demanded that they had to be paid more, although their current pay of A$40–50000 per year also contain bonuses such as overtime. Qantas has offered a pay increase of 3% per annum, for three years. The CPI is around 3.5%, as of December 2012. As of 21 November 2011, negotiations with two unions have failed, and an arbitration led by the Australian industrial court seems to be the only plausible way to unlock the conflict.

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