p r ol o gu e
Qantas could easily have become a small footnote in history early last
century when two returned war pilots travelled to Sydney to pick up
its first aeroplanes. Hudson Fysh and Paul Ginty McGinness served
in the trenches at Gallipoli during World War I, before becoming
mates in No.1 Squadron in the Australian Flying Corps. On January
21, 1921, the co-founders of the airline were living an adventure in
Australia as they set off from Mascot aerodrome in Sydney. McGinness
was flying an Avro, and Fysh a BE2e biplane in which he had clocked
up just thirty minutes. Flying in tandem, the pair lost visual contact
as clouds rolled in north of Sydney on the way to their first stop in
Newcastle.1 With an uneasy feeling in his stomach Fysh decided to fly
through the darkening clouds, hoping he would quickly emerge into
clear sky on the other side. But he soon realised it was the wrong decision. Before long he was on the verge of losing control of the plane as
he tried to fly under the clouds, which he hoped were not shrouding
hilltops. In an instant he hit a clear patch of sky to discover he was in a
valley with clouds hugging the ground. After finally regaining control,
he touched down on a hillside, careering through bushes and eventually coming to rest near a miners cottage. Fysh and his passenger,
Arthur Baird, had narrowly escaped disaster.
The rich history of the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial
Services stretches back to a lounge in the stylish Gresham Hotel
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in Brisbane in August 1920. Around a glass-topped table, Fysh,
McGinness and Queensland grazier Fergus McMaster cemented
plans to form a company to offer air services to the region. They were
adventurers in every sense of the word, literally flying by the seat
of their pants. Three months lateron November 16, 1920the
founders signed papers in the Gresham Hotel formally registering as
a company that was to become known by the acronym QANTAS,
and based in the small central Queensland town of Winton. Little
did they know that what they founded within just two decades of the
Wright brothers first flight would become the worlds second-oldest
airline after Dutch flag carrier KLM. Australias geographic isolation
and the difficulty of traversing its big, wide-open expanse explained
why people quickly cast aside their concerns about unreliable flying
machines in the early twentieth century to travel by air. Parts of western Queensland where Qantas was born often became difficult to pass
overland during wet periods. Many parts of the state lacked roads and
bridges. An air service offered a way over the onland barriers.
Qantas soon shifted its base from Winton to Longreach, and later
to Brisbane, before settling on Sydney where it remains today. In the
process, Qantas became indelibly linked to the Australian psyche.
It connected the country to political and business capitals on the
other side of the world in Europe and the United States. Australians
passion for aviation has grown in tandem with the airline since the
early days of the World War I veterans who founded Qantas. It helped
the country to tackle the tyranny of distance. Later nicknamed the
Flying Kangaroo, the airline has become etched in popular culture.
Playing the autistic Raymond Babbitt, who feared flying, in the 1988
film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman remarked to his brother, who was
trying to coax him onto a plane, Qantas. Qantas never crashed.
While glossing over plane crashes in its early years, the reference
helped cement Qantas place in history. As the national flag carrier,
Qantas reputation was strengthened as it mounted missions to rescue Australians from far-flung parts of the globe. At home in 1974, it
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achieved a world record at the time for cramming the most number of
people onto a Boeing 747 jumbo during a rescue flight from Darwin
following Cyclone Tracy. The airline became one of the few Australian
companies to become known globally.
As it nears its centenary, Qantas has reached another fork in the
road. The countrys once-dominant national carrier has become an
airline in decline. After the collapse of Ansett in 2001, Qantas was
handed a near monopoly in the countrys domestic air-travel market.
Today it lurches from crisis to crisis as it is buffeted from all sidesand
from within. The story of the decline of Qantas has all the hallmarks
of a modern corporate tragedy. A multitude of factors have brought
Qantas to where it is todaymanagement missteps, the rise of a challenger, big egos fighting for the right to chart its path, a company
of tribes resistant to change, and the opening of Australian routes to
the world. After taking the reins in 2008, the Qantas chief executive,
Alan Joyce, became a polarising figure. To his supporters, he tackled
problems his predecessors were unwilling to confront. To his critics,
he presided over an irreversible shrinking of the airline. His unprecedented decision to ground the entire Qantas fleet in late 2011 to break
an industrial dispute divided the nation and made him a household
name. He earned plaudits from the big end of town, but many travellers and a large slice of the airlines workforce deemed Qantas action
union busting from another era. Behind Joyce sat Leigh Clifford, the
Qantas chairman who never shied away from a fight. As the aviation
reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald since early 2008, I have covered Qantas every step and met and interviewed its chief executive on
numerous occasions. But neither Joyce nor Clifford would be interviewed for this book.
The airlines predicament echoes that of Australia, a country at the
crossroads. As much as Qantas has grappled with a rewriting of the
rules governing aviation, the lucky country is dealing with the challenges of globalisation in the twenty-first century. Qantas is an airline
that evokes passion like almost no other. Everyone has an opinion
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on how it should be runpoliticians, shareholders, unions, travellers, the media, the airlines board, executives and workforce, and part
of the wider Australian public that still believes Qantas remains in
the nations hands two decades after government ownership ended.
History helps to tell us why Qantas is where it is today, and gives us an
insight into its path ahead. Rod Eddington, a former chief executive
at Ansett and British Airways, remarked: There are no new ways of
going broke; only old ways that keep getting revisited.2
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