Flying blind: Qantas and Jetstar limp from one doomed survival plan to another

Freshly appointed Jetstar CEO Stephanie Tully, who is being promoted from her position as the Qantas group chief customer officer, will have plenty on her plate when she starts work in November. 

Quite aside from the airlines’ deteriorating relationship with its staff and customers, the fresh flood of cancellations from busy offshore destinations in the middle of the school holidays has exposed the Qantas Group’s small and ageing fleet. There is a range of emerging problems with the composite material on the long-haul 787s.

These issues are creating a capacity headache for Qantas and Jetstar as they head into the critical summer peak holiday season and could see Qantas “wet” or “damp” aircraft to boost capacity, leasing planes from other airlines with a full crew and flight deck crew, respectively.

Jetstar’s latest problem is that a second of its long-range 787s was struck by lightning in Cairns on Friday. It is now in Sydney for maintenance, triggering the cancellation of some international flights from Hawaii, Singapore and Bali — the latest was on Tuesday night. The airline also cancelled a dozen domestic flights in the 24 hours to midday on Tuesday.

“As of [Tuesday] three of our 11 aircraft in our 787 fleet are temporarily out of operation, however, our engineering team are working hard to safely return all aircraft to service by the end of this week but will always put safety ahead of schedule,” Jetstar said. It did not offer guidance on coming cancellations or delays.

Customers are understandably irate, particularly coming just weeks after thousands of passengers were stranded in Bali, Thailand and Japan due to other maintenance problems.

One Twitter user, @shane19393386, said: “Waiting at 5am at Waikiki for taxi to airport for 10am flight home, receive a text saying flight cancelled for engineering reasons. Forced to get a $3000 QANTAS flight. People did warn me not to trust Jetstar.” 

A previous 787, struck by lightning on the Gold Coast in May, remains in maintenance. Its troubles have underscored unique problems with the most recent generation of aircraft made with composite materials, leaving its wings and fuselage riddled with small holes. Older metal planes would have only one “exit” hole for the electric charges.

Jetstar’s first batch of 11 787s was delivered nine years ago and has been worked hard by aviation standards, pilots told Crikey. They say all the 787s need to be repainted, which is a worldwide problem also due to issues with carbon composite material.

This is why pictures of extensive duct tape on various aircraft wings have emerged. While it’s safe in the short term, paint is eventually needed to prevent water from seeping into carbon layers and damaging the aircraft’s wings and body. One aircraft is in South Korea being repainted. It is a time-consuming process that can only be done offshore due to strict Australian pollution controls.

On top of this, Jetstar has a significant shortfall of maintenance staff and cannot fill roles, leading to its daily domestic cancellations and delays, engineering sources said.

Qantas has continuing maintenance issues. The carrier cut 35% of its staff during COVID amid an Australian and worldwide shortage of aviation engineers, and the company’s ageing fleet is playing havoc with its schedules. Crikey has been told repairs and checks for wing cracks on its A380 super jumbo fleet are slowly progressing. Qantas refuses to comment on that. 

Qantas has at least two long-range A330s out of service due to maintenance backlogs. One is a fuel tank problem due to poor quality maintenance in Los Angeles, engineers said. Further delays are expected with one 787 scheduled for a week’s maintenance.

“Part of the Qantas and Jetstar issue is they don’t have spare aircraft,” a Qantas insider said. “The schedule is very tight and when multiple aircraft fail there is not much that can be done. We often don’t have a spare aircraft to roll into its place at short notice.”

While Qantas likes to maintain a fiction of having two completely separate operations, due to its larger fleet the flag carrier acts as a buffer for Jetstar when problems occur with Jetstar staff putting forward requests each day — currently in the hundreds — to move its stranded passengers to Qantas flights. On occasions, entire Qantas planes are “lent” to Jetstar to fill holes in flight schedules. As Qantas enters its busy periods, such issues are exacerbated.

One answer is to “wet” or “damp” lease aircraft. Crikey understands Qantas has been considering this with a number of European carriers, although no deal has been reached.

Such moves are opposed by pilot groups and would starkly expose the lack of investment in new aircraft by Qantas over the past decade since its monster $2.8 billion loss in 2012-13.

The 25 787s Qantas has received since 2013 were under a deal done by chief executive Alan Joyce’s predecessor. Despite Qantas having the right to order another 50 under a rejigged Joyce deal, none were ordered. Instead Qantas made a bumper order of A220 short-range and A350 long-haul aircraft from Boeing’s rival. But deliveries don’t start until 2025 — great for the company’s bottom line; not so good for its customers.

This means at least two more years with its current fleet for Jetstar’s Stephanie Tully and whoever succeeds Joyce at the top of Qantas when he departs the carrier, something that is, at present, scheduled for later next year.