Qantas denies big job-loss rumours, affirms London service

Qantas is announcing major changes to its operations later this week but denies media reports these could mean job losses of up to 3000.

“There are a series of unsubstantiated and unsourced rumours swirling around ahead of our half year results [on February 27], ranging from estimates on job losses to route changes,” a Qantas statement says.

The airline also denies it is dropping services to London amid speculation it is finding it hard to fill two A380 superjumbo flights each day on the Dubai-London leg.

The so-called Kangaroo route between Australia and the UK is now operated in an alliance with Emirates through Dubai rather than Singapore and Emirates offers a much wider choice of destinations in Europe and elsewhere through its network than just London.

“The facts are that Qantas has flagged the need to make tough decisions as part of strengthening our business, which we will outline next Thursday. For our customers, this won’t change our focus on being one of the world’s best airlines,” the Qantas statement says.

“In December, Qantas flagged job cuts of at least 1000 over the next 12 months in the face of unprecedented pressures in both domestic and international markets. We have also announced plans to cut $A2 billion of costs from our business over the next three years, and will provide more detail on this at our half year results.”
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Extra services for World Cup soccer, South Africa codeshare goes
Meanwhile, Qantas has announced it will extend its South American route to Rio de Janiero during the World Cup soccer tournament and is dropping a codeshare with South African Airways (SAA).

Between June 10 and June 30, Qantas will add two additional flights from Sydney to Santiago in Chile while extending four services from Santiago to Rio de Janeiro.

Qantas operates three Sydney-Santiago services each week (on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday) as well as codesharing on LAN's daily services.

The codeshare with SAA between Perth and Johannesburg will end on May 31, while SAA will do likewise on the Australian airline's daily Boeing 747 jumbo service between Sydney and Johannesburg.

From then, passengers wanting to travel on Qantas will have a thrice-weekly codeshare service with Emirates from Perth to Dubai with onward connections to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.