Qantas hit by more delays, slashes first-class and business seats

Qantas Airways will slash a number of first and business class seats across its long-haul fleet due to a drop in demand, chief executive Alan Joyce has announced.

The decision comes as the airline’s check-in system were beset with problems yesterday, causing delays up to an hour long with domestic and international flights affected.

Joyce has said in the Australian Financial Review the company will increase its number of economy seats contained on international routes in order to compete with international airlines, including Singapore and Emirates.

“It is very clear the productivity is not right – we have too many premium class seats on many aircraft,” he said. “In certain markets we have first class seats where there is no need for first class, and we have too many business class seats on some routes.”

Joyce did not specify how many seats would be cut, but said the Qantas model would be designed to emulate Singapore Airlines. This would see a cut in first and business class seats of about 15%, as Singapore currently has 12 first class, 60 business and 399 economy seats on its long-haul aircraft.

Cutting the seats is a part of the company’s broader cost-saving procedure. The airline’s net profit has plunged 88% to $123 million during 2009 due to lower demand, with the airline industry as a whole expected to lose over $10 billion just this year alone.

While Joyce admits the reconfiguration of aircrafts may cost the company “a lot of money”, he says the plan will provide “a better revenue-generating alternative and in a lot of cases you can pay back the increased seats pretty fast and you do get a better customer proposition”.

Apart from revamping the airline’s seating arrangements, Qantas has attempted to reduce check-in times by embedding computer chips in frequent flyer cards to act as boarding passes, and reduce overall queue waiting times.

But customers were forced to wait longer for their flights yesterday as the airline’s check-in system failed, with the company having to check in passengers manually.

The “Amadeus” system crashed at 5pm, causing delays for a number of major airlines including United, British Airways and Thai Airways, but according to the company was rectified at 8pm.

“We were experiencing some technical issues as of about 5pm with our Amadeus check-in system,” a Qantas spokeswoman said. “As a consequence, our staff were having to check people in manually, which was causing delays across the network.

Qantas said services will run as normal today.