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A330 with 203 people on board had to make an emergency landing in Guam. The plane was four hours into its flight from Osaka, in Japan, to the Gold Coast when the pilot noticed a small flame near the window and smoke in the cockpit. The electrical fault in a window heating element was quickly dealt with by a pilot, who used a fire extinguisher to put out the blaze. Nerves were on edge because, just the week before, an Air France Airbus 330 had crashed into the Atlantic en route from Brazil to Paris, killing all 228 people on board. The worst that the Jetstar Guam incident provoked was a minor delay for the passengers while another plane was sent to pick them up, and a slanging match between the unions and Qantas management about overseas maintenance. Qantas operations chief Lyell Strambi was quick to tell the engineering union that the electrical component had not been part of the service undertaken on the nearly new plane in Manila the year before. ‘There has been no requirement to touch this component since the aircraft was delivered, there is no history of it being an issue with our A330 fleet and there have been no directives from Airbus covering this component,’ he said.19

That incident was followed a few days later by another A330 hitting turbulence over Borneo on its way to Perth, sending 13 passengers, including three children, to hospital. Qantas corporate affairs manager David Epstein was immediately on to Fairfax Radio to calm nerves and assure travellers it was simply turbulence and not a computer glitch. ‘About four hours out of Hong Kong while it was flying over Borneo, it hit some very severe turbulence which the captain unfortunately didn’t get a lot of notice about and, as a result, six passengers and one crew member sustained minor injuries,’ he said, giving the initial injury figures, which were later upgraded.20 Veteran Captain Brett Flack said there had been no time to warn passengers, many of whom were sleeping, to buckle up. One of the 206 passengers on board, who only gave his name as John, said there had been a loud bang and dramatic drop in altitude. ‘I was sitting at the exit door and I had this lady, [who] was waiting at the restroom and she flew up and hit the ceiling and came crashing down to the floor. It was just a matter of a few seconds but it was really sudden and things went flying. She was on the floor and she was just traumatised.’21 Passenger Chris Rose described the turbulence: ‘It was total free-fall. No question, it’s the worst I’ve ever been in. There was lightning everywhere … obviously we were right in the middle of a storm or thunder but it was pretty severe.’22 Investigators pointed out there was no specific issue with Airbus aircraft, but said they would be looking at the characteristics of that incident in relation to earlier ones.

The Qantas corporate affairs team was quick to respond to those incidents, perhaps finally acknowledging that one of Australia’s premier brands was still being dragged into the mud and that simply treating the travelling public with disdain would no longer put bums on seats. Meanwhile, the Qantas image continued to take a battering elsewhere. The flagship A380’s frequent delays earned it the nicknames A3-Lately and A180, because faults meant that no sooner had the aircraft been wheeled out of the hanger than it had to be turned around and put back in again. The actor Russell Crowe apparently complained about the peace and quiet of first class being shattered by people banging up and down the stairs. A piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by columnist Miranda Devine articulated the fears of many passengers that the new generation of planes allowed the computers to override the pilots rather than the other way round. Couple that with the swine-flu pandemic, which was stopping people from travelling anyway, and Alan Joyce’s annus horribilis was not looking likely to improve.

The annus horribilis continued in August 2009, when the company posted its smallest profit since privatisation in 1995. Unveiling his first full year of results since taking