The inevitable has happened – Virgin’s Borghetti’s game changing pays off….as Qantas slumps in world ratings
With the airline war between Qantas and Virgin continuing apace, Virgin CEO John Borghetti must have been celebrating and popping corks this last weekend, with Virgin Australia having rocketed 20 places from 32nd in 2011 to 12th in the World Airline Awards, based on a poll of 18 million air travellers between July 2011 and June 2012.
Over at Qantas on the other hand, Alan Joyce and he colleagues might well be having crisis tasks to analyse why Qantas has slumped 8 places to 15th, now rated below Virgin, dropping 8 places and the first time Qantas has dropped below the top 10 positions.
With the World Airline Awards survey measuring customer satisfaction in areas such as staff service, boarding, seat comfort, catering and cleanliness, this result is probably not surprising to many, with Virgin now a full service carrier providing excellence in all the categories and at the same time, while Qantas Executives have worked hard to improve the airline’s performance, there appears to still to be a great deal of inconsistency in its delivery.
Qantas trying to justify the result said in a statement that the ongoing industrial dispute which has plagued the carrier in the last year contributed to the drop, saying, “Following the industrial campaign by several unions which disrupted thousands of passengers, we anticipated our ranking may slip” and “Our employees have worked hard to rebuild loyalty from our customers and we have recently reached the highest level of customer satisfaction in Australia for over three years.”
While having to swallow the bitter pill of the slipped rating news, Qantas did receive other awards, for its first class lounge, premium economy class and premium economy class catering, but over at Virgin, they said that the airline’s rebranding from a low-cost carrier, was a significant factor in its ranking rise along with CEO John Borghetti having set a strategy to be the airline of choice for Australia, changing their product, network and a range of other aspects, which they sets them apart, with the ranking result all to do with that strategy.
Interesting times ahead in the skies!
Industry Insider Commentary and Opinion by John Alwyn-Jones, Global Travel Media Special Correspondent
