Founded in 1920 in Queensland, Australia, Qantas Group celebrated its 100 years in 2020. In 1935, the company started its international flights. The prime business of the group is international airlines that is one of the biggest airlines in the world. In Australia, Qantas Airways Limited is the largest airline in the country in terms of fleets and international services. Qantas has a long and interesting history. Over the years, it has developed in terms of several domestic and international fleets and destinations. People in Australia and order parts of the world keep high trust in the company.
If it gave you an assignment to Qantas Group and its subsidiaries, know its work culture, customer service, and management well.
A brief history of Qantas Group
Qantas stands for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. Fergus McMaster, Hudson Fysh, and Paul McGinness found it on 16th November 1920. In 1934, Qantas went for a joint venture with Imperial Airways of the UK to form a new company called Qantas Empire Airways Limited (QEA). This company started working in 1935 when they started flying between Brisbane and Darwin. They were just expanding their services to other international locations before World War II began. The enemy bombing destroyed many fleets, while the Australian Government gained other fleets for war purposes.
In 1943, Qantas started its flying boat services. In 1947, it nationalised the company in Australia. It transferred the domestic services of the company to another nationalised airline called Trans Australian Airlines. Qantas was then left with international services only. Qantas House, the head office of Qantas, was established in Sydney in 1957. In 1959, Qantas bought their first Boeing plane and entered the jet age.
In 1992, it merged the airlines with Australian Airlines, but the Government started privatizing Qantas phase by phase from 1993 to 1997. In 1998, Qantas established One world Alliance along with British Airways, American Airlines, Canadian Airlines, and Cathay Pacific were the other members. In the domestic market, Qantas was losing ground because of the excellent performance of Virgin Blue. To compete with them, Qantas founded their budget for domestic airlines called Jetstar. Later, Qantas expanded the services of Jetstar internationally, at first to New Zealand and then to Asia. For Asian services, they formed Jetstar Asia Airways.
Subsidiaries of Qantas
Qantas has formed or gained several companies since its inception in 1920, some of the major subsidiaries of the company are Australia Asia Airlines, Australian Airlines, Impulse Airlines, QantasLink, Jetstar, Jetstar Asia Airways, and Jet Connect.
Qantas operates its international freight services through the subsidiary Qantas Freight and Australian Air Express. Qantas Holidays is the most popular tourism company, mostly doing B2B business in the tourism sector. It’s a part of the Jetset Travel world Group. It promotes holiday packages, sports events, fairs, stage shows, and destination promotions. Qantas Loyalty is a customer service subsidiary working for sales promotion of their airline’s services.
Qantas Management
The entire board of directors takes care of the Group’s activities. Alan Joyce is the CEO of Qantas Airlines and Richer Goyder is the Chair of the Board. Gareth Evans is the chairperson of Jetstar Group. In this way, Qantas Group has created a state-of-the-art hierarchy assigning all major responsibilities to highly experienced people such as Andrew Finch as the legal head and Elodie Blac as the International Strategist for the group.
The group is maintaining a path-breaking system for HRM whereby they recruit 1% of total employees from the Australian Aboriginal community. They have a specific program for the same. Besides, they have several other interesting and pioneering policies for local communities and society. Over the years Qantas has been working relentlessly for better airline services, generating employment in several sectors, and taking an active role in social development.