• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 283 0

‘We will be talking to our customers directly about any other needs according to their individual circumstances and in particular in association with any injuries sustained as a result of this incident.’11 At least ten of the most seriously injured were preparing compensation claims with the law firms Carter Capner and Slater & Gordon. One woman who was badly injured during the flight told the Sydney Morning Herald that a Qantas representative had entered her hospital room unannounced, asked her how she was injured and then asked her to sign a draft copy of her answers. ‘It is not right for Qantas to try to get a “statement” from me without telling me that they are from Qantas in the first place. It is as if they are trying to cross-examine me,’ said the woman, who declined to be named.12 Qantas denied the 28 October visit ever took place. But the injured passenger’s family obtained closed-circuit television footage of a woman visiting her on that day. They alleged it was an attempt by the airline to get evidence before a compensation claim was lodged. The woman’s daughter said the visitor ‘told my mum that she has come because of the Qantas accident and asked my mum to sign that piece of paper which she has drafted. When my mum heard that she is from Qantas she told her that she doesn’t want to talk any more. This is very scary and stressful for us.’13

Fellow passengers Sam and Rani Samaratunga were not happy with the airline’s offer of compensation, which included $300 for out-of-pocket expenses, and engaged Melbourne lawyer Roger Singh to press their claim for as much as $100,000. ‘This is the worst experience we’ve had. During the process we saw our own deaths,’ said Mr Samaratunga, 68, who claimed he hurt his neck when he smashed into the overhead locker.14 His 62-year-old wife suffered spinal, neck and head injuries as well as losing several teeth. They held a press conference to explain that they wanted the airline to pay for ongoing medical care in Sri Lanka and to cover the cost of care for Mrs Samaratunga’s 87-year-old mother, for whom she was the sole carer. Mr Singh said: ‘Claims for compensation in my mind need to be substantial in this case. With the number of people on board the plane, I think some 303 people, we could be talking about claims which are going to be in the multi-million dollar mark.’15

The QF72 incident came in the month before Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon’s contract was due to end. He would stand down at the Annual General Meeting in November 2008. It had been a tough year, with the QF30 exploding oxygen bottle incident bringing a raft of bad publicity that was amplified by the QF72 nose-dive. It raised questions about exactly what shape Dixon was leaving the airline in. A survey by Labor pollsters UMR Research published in the Australian in December showed that passengers were worried about the airline’s safety standards. Six out of ten Australians believed safety standards had dropped in the last two years, but two-thirds still believed Qantas was safe to fly.

Qantas argued back that the Qantas Group’s rate of turnbacks – 98 for 350,000 flights – compared favourably to other airlines. But that group figure included Jetstar which, at five years old, had a very new fleet. The Qantas planes were all getting on a bit and were due for replacement in a $30 billion capital expenditure program that included the giant new Airbus A380s and Boeing 787 Dreamliners. However, at the end of 2008 it was still flying mostly 747s, a plane that first rolled off the production line over 30 years earlier when Holden was still making Monaros and John Travolta was more famous for his role in Saturday Night Fever than for flying around the world as a Qantas ambassador.

Dixon’s legacy, apart from low staff morale, was a feeling that engineering and maintenance standards were slipping. Union representatives were happy to express their concerns anonymously to the Australian Financial Review. ‘Qantas engineers are under-trained and under-resourced and are getting more work than they can cope with. At the turn of the