{"id":250894,"date":"2025-07-14T11:14:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T01:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=250894"},"modified":"2025-07-14T11:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T01:15:07","slug":"qantas-pilots-blast-airline-over-data-hack-of-6-million-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=250894","title":{"rendered":"Qantas pilots blast airline over data hack of 6 million customers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If Qantas<\/a> were a person, it\u2019d be that person at the bar who spills your drink, blames the table, and then proceeds to do nothing except make lame excuses and wander off without offering to buy you a fresh one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The airline\u2019s latest crisis? Last week\u2019s cyber privacy breach<\/a> involving 5.7 million customers\u2019 personal data and, for a subset of those, frequent flyer data. More than a week after the data breach, Qantas appears none the wiser as to who perpetrated it or why. If it does, it is certainly not sharing that information with those affected: its customers. Qantas now says<\/a> it knows who had what data stolen and is contacting those affected. Progressively.

The realities of this monumental failure by the airline continue to be quietly downplayed by management as a \u201ctechnical issue\u201d; no mention of a cyberattack, and no evidence of malicious activity, they say. And, anyway, it was on a \u201cthird-party platform\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince the incident, we have put in place a number of additional cybersecurity measures to further protect our customers\u2019 data, and are continuing to review what happened,\u201d Qantas said in its latest update.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you talk to the people who keep Qantas airborne, you\u2019ll get a different story, one of outsourcing and a leadership team pathologically incapable of owning its failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a one-off glitch. It\u2019s the third major IT-related debacle in as many years. And it\u2019s yet another symptom of a company that has hollowed out its internal capacity and outsourced critical functions all to save money. The customers and staff always seem to come last,\u201d one pilot told Crikey<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another pilot noted that the Qantas chairman John Mullen has yet to make any comment or offer reassurance to customers: \u201cThe board seem to be sticking their heads in the sand and hoping the problem will go away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s the now all-too-familiar outsourcing that most rankles Qantas staff. The airline\u2019s rank and file are still fuming about the illegal outsourcing of baggage handlers, which the company fought all the way to the High Court before being found guilty several times and forced to pay hundreds of millions<\/a> in compensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a crisis management perspective, Qantas has once again failed the basics. There\u2019s been no public accountability, just passive-voice statements and buried FAQs. Customers found out about the data breach via app alerts or media leaks initially \u2014 not from the airline. The message seems to be: we\u2019ll let you know if it gets worse. Given Qantas\u2019 track record, this may be designed to limit legal exposure, but it torches trust, something that its CEO Vanessa Hudson has been working hard to try and regain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But actions speak louder than comforting words. As a Qantas Frequent Flyer myself, who had received an initial email notifying me that my data may well have been taken by the hackers, I once more called the outsourced (yes, really \u2014 to the UK) help number, where staff were no wiser than they had been when I called them last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Crickey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Qantas now admitting hackers stole data from nearly 6 million customers, for some disgruntled pilots, it\u2019s further proof of operational rot as customers are left picking up the pieces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":250895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[402,6113,515],"tags":[8781],"class_list":["post-250894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-airline-news","category-cyber-attack","category-qantas","tag-vanessa-hudson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t