‘Never-on-time airline’: Aussie golf great Greg Norman takes swing at Qantas

Fiona Byrne, The Age’s CBD columnist, writes that Australian golf legend Greg Norman has taken a very public swing at Qantas, calling it the “never on-time” airline and describing it as outdated and unreliable.

Norman, who was a high-profile celebrity ambassador for Qantas for decades, teed off at the airline’s management on Sunday, challenging them to get the service back up to his expected standard, adding the hashtag #alottodo to make his point.

He also questioned whether profit had been put above “customer caring, reputation and service” and said it used to be one of the world’s top three airlines but “alas no more”.

Known as the Great White Shark since the early ’80s, Norman took a fair bite out of Qantas, blasting it on his 244,000-strong Instagram account and saying he was looking for another airline to travel with. Among other things, the lack of Wi-Fi on the long haul seems to have been part of what riled him.

US-based Norman recently attended the NRL grand final in Sydney and was travelling from Sydney to Dallas on a Qantas A380 over the weekend. A delay in leaving appears to have been the trigger for his epic spray.

“I have always tried to support my national airline @Qantas. Sadly, their reputation of the ‘never on-time’ airline (or the ones I am on – this time Syd-Dallas circa 3 hrs late departing) + an hour to get one bag in Dallas now has me looking elsewhere,” Norman fumed online.

“Maybe @emirates longer but reliable, Wi-Fi, comfort caring.

“Too bad, as @Qantas was once one of the top 3 in the world for a great travel experience.

“Alas no more #whathappened Profit before customer caring, reputation and service!?

”And not to have Wi-Fi in this day and age with the cost/ticket - #insane #dated. Ground staff excellent - Qantas admin get to work and bring back the pride in - “The Spirit of Australia” and be a world leader in your industry again!! #alottodo”

Not surprisingly, Qantas was well aware of Norman’s dummy-spit when CBD called on Sunday.

“Unfortunately, our flight from Sydney to Dallas Fort Worth on Saturday was delayed departing Sydney while our engineers fixed a fuelling issue,” a Qantas spokesperson told us, with no mention of Norman’s other gripes.

No doubt someone will let Norman know Wi-Fi is in the process of being rolled out on Qantas’s A380 fleet, and is available on its 787s and A330 planes.

It might be too little too late, as it sounds like Norman will have swapped his boarding pass allegiances before that rollout is complete.

Julie Bishop’s accidental ‘false flag’

This was a change to the programming: Julie Bishop, who normally uses her Instagram page to share highlights of European trips and designer dresses, last week reposted a conspiracy-laden video describing the flydubai incident as a “false flag” for Israel.

The former foreign minister, who led Australia’s overseas efforts from 2013 to 2018 (and more recently became infamous for her role in the Australian National University’s prolonged crisis when she was chancellor) reshared a video from the Daily Rumble, a vague Instagram account that promised “100% independent news on the Middle East”.

“This is not the story they’re telling us,” announced its presenter, before launching into some generally debunked conspiracies about how the incident unfolded – all to gain more than seven million viewers.

So did our former foreign minister really believe the video she’d reshared with her 110,000 followers? “It was an accident,” she told us. “I deleted it as soon as I realised it had been done.”

We’ve all been there.

An even slower news day

Don’t get mad, get even. We brought news last week that Sydney’s favourite tech villain and a regular of this column, Richard White, had sent his staff at the beleaguered WiseTech a surprise email with a “gift”: an AI jingle made by one of his children.

“The song and video is so good and the song is so catchy that I think we share the love and give it to you all to see if your children love it as much as we do,” he wrote.

But Jazzy Learns, the AI character White had shared with staff, called us out on Instagram for how “a proud, supportive dad moment of his teenage daughter [was] usurped and demonised by the media”. We were accused of picking up a “cheap headline on a slow news day” without referencing the actual work.

A cheap headline? We’d do nothing of the sort! But we are fans of the (slightly) good-natured response.

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