Travel Plans

Do you trust Qantas anymore?  Brisbane Times Blogs

Bits of the planes keep falling off, or blowing out, fights are repeatedly aborted and turned back or diverted to emergency landings.

This post echoes our lunch time conversation because we started off talking about Qantas and then continued on to talking about the situation with travel at the moment. There are quite a few influences. No one wanted the Qantas maintenance moved offshore and it's mighty odd that there have been so many problems when this is a carrier which had an excellent record. It is our signature airline but it is treated very poorly. Qantas was Australia. Now the wheels, door...you name it, keep falling off. The the Air New Zealand plane flying back here the other week had some very weird noises which had everyone looking at each other...and that happened when I was flying Air New Zealand and I haven't been back since and that's a pity...but I don't like planes which make odd noises. There are far too many mishaps. Then there are the outrageous petrol prices which have been blatantly manipulated. It is getting as much money as they can out of the planet. Look up the top 10 income earners on the planet. Petrol companies are doing pretty well at our expense and they are getting away with it. So these fluctuating costs have increased travel prices and there is no guarantee you'll have a static airfare if you book early. The the rise and fall of the dollar means your tourist dollar is fluctuating as are your airline prices and your airline safety ...and then there are the events...like our friends just narrowly missed the earthquake in China. Others got stuck in floods. How many people got stuck in the Chunnel just recently and how much is this costing the traveller....not to mention the unexpected lengthy waits at airports and the "you're on your own" attitude of travel companies when things go wrong. So we discussed all of that and figured saving carbon was probably the best thing to back at the moment and use our tourist money at home on ourselves and for seasoned travellers this is annoying but everything is too volatile at the moment and that is how well we have done as a planet.We have worked damned hard on instability.