Blog / Euro

In case you didn’t know, Alan Joyce is the CEO of Qantas, Australia’s national airline. Last Saturday he took the unprecedented action of grounding the entire Qantas fleet. It left passengers, the Australian Government, Qantas workers and the unions completely stunned. It was a case of “What did he just say? Did I hear that correctly? Is he insane?” A mere 8 minutes from the announcement, at around 5pm Saturday, every plane was stopped on the tarmac. Every single plane. Even those that had boarded were told to “get off, you won’t be flying today.”

Why take such drastic action you may ask? Qantas had already sustained months of industrial action that has been causing flight cancellations and passenger inconvenience not to mention a 68m loss of revenue. The unions had told him...