I’m sure many people must have heard about the “flight-story-of-the-week”. Qantas, a major Australian airline company, took a major blow this week with its A380 superjumbo plane that was heading for Australia from Singapore. Just 20 minutes after the take-off the plane had to turn back to Singapore as one of the four engines started “shooting out white smoke” and only after the safe-landing did passengers actually realise how serious the damage was as the whole engine was completely wrecked. Unfortunately, a few days later another one of Qantas’ A380 planes experienced some problems too.
It’s evident that these two recent events took a toll on Qantas’ sales as passengers throughout the world were loosing faith in this airline. However, what I found impressive was that even though there was so many negative comments directed at Qantas, they didn’t focus on that and instead immediately tried to find away to retain its customers. They got Hollywood celebrity, John Travolta to reinforce the fact that Qantas is still the best airline by having him fly his own Boeing plane and talk to the media about how much faith he has in the Qantas planes. As a result, Qantas used a well-respected reference person to reassure its consumers that their planes are in top-shape and to remind them that Qantas is still one of the best airlines.
Personally, I have to applaud Qantas for handling the situation in a calm and efficient manner because it is unfortunate the such events occurred, but what matters to me the most – as a consumer – is that the airline doesn’t dwell on the failures of the past but finds ways to remind me why I should continue to fly with it.
If I go to Australia one day, I’m definitely going to fly with Qantas.
