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The Men Who Killed Qantas
This book is the account of the Qantas story that every airline passenger needs to the full and frank history of Australia's national airline. It takes you into the boardroom, where golden parachutes are signed off, and onto the hangar floor, where engineers battle accounting cuts to keep planes flying safely. It takes you back to the foundation of the airline to disprove the line that Qantas never crashes. This is the warts and all history the Qantas PR department does not want you to read ... but you can bet they'll be reading it too!
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 31, 2011
Worth reading if you are interested in aviation and/ or Qantas. The title of the book is just an attention seeker and not appropriate for the content. The books looks at some history of Qantas and the major safety incidents and scandals that have the headlines over the last 15yrs. The common thread in most cases being the arrogant management of the company.
convince you that they "
convince you that they "
July 26, 2012
This book is the history of Australia's longest serving airline. It reveals the critical events that lead various Qantas successes and failures and provides the reader an insight of how Qantas operates. To this end, The Men who Killed QANTAS is a suitable book for individuals who have a thirst and longing for knowledge-specific to the topic of Australian aviation, especially Qantas!
September 20, 2022
A well researched book on the history of Qantas and the many crashes and mis haps
which have been hidden by the airline .The part about the plan to sell the airline for the
benefit of the board members and risk the staff superannuation made compelling reading.
A must read for anyone interested in the aviation industry or big company greed and
corruption.
which have been hidden by the airline .The part about the plan to sell the airline for the
benefit of the board members and risk the staff superannuation made compelling reading.
A must read for anyone interested in the aviation industry or big company greed and
corruption.
June 3, 2024
I enjoyed the portions of this book about contemporary (to when his was last revised in 2014) Qantas management, unfortunately most of the book is made up of the early history of Qantas and overviews of significant Qantas incidents (most of which have nothing to do with Qantas itself).
March 1, 2018
Not quite what i expected just a whole lot of history about QANTAS
August 2, 2011
Apparently some of The Men Who Killed Qantas are female. And they played their part in killing Qantas by sleeping with the passengers.
Obviously the title is meant to be eye-catching, but it's not a particularly good reflection of the contents. It is however a representation of the strength of feeling held by the author and many Australians regarding the perceived degradation in service and management of what was once a source of national pride: Qantas.
This work contains a collection of incidents that paint Qantas in a negative light. From fatal crashes, failed corporate marriages, industrial action, blackmail, war, poor aircraft maintenance and design; to Hollywood stars flying QF and their literal and figurative whoring, what comes to light is that Rainman was wrong: Qantas was never the airline that did not crash. More than once these crashes involved the destruction of an aircraft, but even more often it was a crash in the people's emotional stock in a pioneer airline that both helped define Australia to the rest of the world, and connected Australia with it.
Rather than a collection of anecdotes, the carrier's chronological history is used to demonstrate that Qantas failure has always been present. As interesting as it is to airline buffs, the book is as much a work on the effects on older companies of moving from a capitalist society (the original Qantas company raised finances around the bar of the Winton Pub) to a corporatist one (in which value for shareholder's is unceasingly financed by cuts, cuts and more cuts).
Obviously the title is meant to be eye-catching, but it's not a particularly good reflection of the contents. It is however a representation of the strength of feeling held by the author and many Australians regarding the perceived degradation in service and management of what was once a source of national pride: Qantas.
This work contains a collection of incidents that paint Qantas in a negative light. From fatal crashes, failed corporate marriages, industrial action, blackmail, war, poor aircraft maintenance and design; to Hollywood stars flying QF and their literal and figurative whoring, what comes to light is that Rainman was wrong: Qantas was never the airline that did not crash. More than once these crashes involved the destruction of an aircraft, but even more often it was a crash in the people's emotional stock in a pioneer airline that both helped define Australia to the rest of the world, and connected Australia with it.
Rather than a collection of anecdotes, the carrier's chronological history is used to demonstrate that Qantas failure has always been present. As interesting as it is to airline buffs, the book is as much a work on the effects on older companies of moving from a capitalist society (the original Qantas company raised finances around the bar of the Winton Pub) to a corporatist one (in which value for shareholder's is unceasingly financed by cuts, cuts and more cuts).
September 15, 2012
Allan Joyce needs to go back to Aer Lingus
June 17, 2013
The title is misleading, but overall The Men Who Killed Qantas is a great read, particularly if you are a fan of both management texts and Air Crash Investigations.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews