It seems that Qantas and its new chief executive, Vanessa Hudson, have been doing a lot of apologising lately. And so they should, with the latest World Airline Awards showing our national carrier’s decline from 5th in 2022, 17th in 2023, to a new low of 24th in the latest results. When an airline descends that rapidly, alarms usually go off: Not in the cockpit, in the boardroom.

Skytrax’s World Airline Awards have been described as the “Oscars of the aviation industry”. So it’s not as though Qantas can look at this result and shrug its shoulders. Instead, it should roll up its sleeves.

Qantas is currently a shadow of its former self. Credit: Getty

The bad result is hardly surprising, with the airline flying from one bad news story to the next of late. No need for a passenger manifest of gripes here; a brief summary would include illegally sacking 1700 ground crew during the pandemic and selling seats on non-existent “ghost flights”.

Essentially, it all boiled down to criticism that the airline’s arrogant management was more concerned about........

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