A couple of days ago, it was reported that Qantas (QF) Chief Operating Officer (COO) Colin Hughes had sent an email to senior executives and managers, asking them to volunteer as baggage handlers on a part-time basis. Qantas is reportedly looking for at least 100 volunteers at Sydney and Melbourne airports. This makes sense since these are the main QF hubs, and also home to their largest corporate offices. So there should be a bigger volunteer pool in these cities.
As part of the role, volunteers will take on the usual tasks of baggage handlers – loading and unloading, driving baggage carts around the ramp. These management staff will be volunteering for either three or five days per week, in shifts of four or six hours. Hughes’ however, did stress in his email that there is no expectation for volunteers to opt-in to this role on top of the usual day job. This volunteer scheme will run for three months.
Why has this happened?
In Hughes’ email, which was shared with the media, he stated that “high levels of winter flu and a Covid spike across the community, coupled with the ongoing tight labour market” have made staffing a challenge across the industry. A Qantas spokesperson further added that Qanats’ operating performance has been below expectation, and they’ve been “pulling out all the stops to improve”. This would appear to be part of that effort.
What was left unsaid – and this is by all means not a Qantas-specific problem – is that layoffs during the earlier days of Covid has left the industry severely understaffed. Qantas alone outsourced 2,000 ground staff roles in November 2020, cutting its own ground handlers in favour of engaging ground handling agents. Of course, ground handling agents themselves would have significantly reduced their own resources in the same period, and now face the same challenges as the airlines to ramp up resources to keep up with operational demands.
Again, to be clear, this problem is not isolated to Qantas. In their case however, because Australia was relatively late in opening up fully, but has rapidly opened since, Qantas have likely faced an overwhelming crush of operational pressures with a relatively short runway to prepare. Of course, it could be argued that they should only operate what they can fulfil while meeting acceptable performance thresholds, but when would a company ever leave revenue on the table?
My thoughts on the situation
At face value, this is an amusing band-aid to mitigate the resourcing issues Qantas is facing. They’re not the first airline to think out of the box on this; Icelandair even had to send baggage handlers to Amsterdam to load bags for its flights.
I do have a couple of questions regarding this scheme:
- Will these volunteers be getting the appropriate training?
- As with any such scheme in a big corporate, will a fear of appearing to have excess capacity at one’s day job override the call to help?
- What group of staff exactly is Qantas referring to by “senior executives and managers”?
With the first question, I cannot stress the importance of appropriate training. One of the tasks mentioned is to drive baggage carts around the apron. An airport ramp is an extremely dangerous place. I don’t know the rules and regulations for driving airside in SYD and MEL, but I can’t imagine it’d be too different from Changi Airport. Without going into too much detail, in Changi, any staff driving airside vehicles have to go through additional training and pass a test before being let loose on the ramp. Any offences committed while driving airside are taken very seriously as well.
Furthermore, given that operational performance is a driving factor behind this call for volunteers, surely Qantas would not risk semi-trained staff exacerbating the problem by mishandling baggage.
With the second question, this can be a quite a common corporate mindset. With other inflationary pressures, Qantas would no doubt continue to cut costs where it can, including bloated head office departments if necessary. Having worked in the industry before, I can certainly foresee some staff being hesitant to volunteer out of fear of appearing to have too much free time in their full-time roles.
On the last question, it’s a bit vague who exactly Qantas hopes will volunteer. Are we really expecting the likes of Alan Joyce and Colin Hughes themselves to loading and unloading bags? I have no doubt they will show up at some point, after all it’s essential to at least appear to ‘walk the talk’. Even though Qantas also highlighted that other head office staff have already been volunteering at airports during peak periods, it’s hard to believe that they’ve gone through enough levels of head office staff that management is now required as well.
This leads the skeptic in me to wonder if there’s a public relations angle to this. As the spokesperson stated, Qantas is “pulling out all the stops to improve”. Very publicly requesting management to help out operationally would further that belief in the public’s eye. Having said that, they are also exposing themselves to critics who would point towards the prior job cuts which undoubtedly affected many lives.
Conclusion
Qantas are trying to creatively, and very publicly, mitigate their operational issues with respect to baggage handling. If you’re flying QF in the next three months, don’t be too surprised to see some of their senior executives loading your bags, or if you’re lucky maybe even Alan Joyce himself! Whether this really works out, or is mostly a PR stunt with little operational benefit, remains to be seen.
Now if Singapore Airlines ever had to go down this route, would their management be willing to volunteer? That’s something I would buy a ticket just to see!