Qantas ends BKK hub dreams

Qantas  confirmed, last week,  it cancelled a contract for a cabin crew centre in Bangkok that was outsourced to Adecco and reaffirmed its policy not to pursue an earlier plan to establish Bangkok as its primary hub in Asia.

Thailand-based Adecco supplied the crew centre facilities and 123 crew on contract. It enabled the airline to satisfy labour union conditions in Australia by not directly employing foreigners for crew duty.

Executive manager Qantas customer and marketing, Lesley Grant, says: “After a thorough review, and in light of the current environment and our future operational needs, we no longer require Adecco to provide us with cabin crew in Bangkok. The Bangkok base was established in 1999 using contracted staff employed by Adecco. This was when Bangkok was likely to become Qantas’ primary Asian hub. While this did not eventuate, we maintained the operation, but it is no longer viable.

Qantas had toyed with the idea of upgrading Bangkok to be its main hub in Asia, but infighting in top management and reoccurring security issues in Thailand led to the hubs being split between Singapore and Bangkok.

Subsequently, Singapore became the preferred hub with a marked downgrading in the importance of Bangkok between 2000 and 2007.

In the past 18 months, the airline fired up to 3,250 employees and just last week it announced AUS$1.5 billion in spending cuts over three years, including AUS$500 million this financial year. It follows AUS$3 billion in cuts over the previous five years.