The world’s 10th biggest airline and Australia’s national flag carrier QANTAS has grounded its domestic and international fleets as of 5PM Saturday in an effort to bring to a close the industrial action that has been crippling Australia’s iconic company for the past 15 months.
According to news.com.au the grounding of the QANTAS fleet by CEO Alan Joyce has affected about 108 aircraft with about 447 flights cancelled and more than 68,000 customers affected globally, since 5PM Saturday.
The move by QANTAS management to ground the airline globally and attempt to bring about an end to the industrial dispute has had news outlets in Australia and internationally covering the story in detail since Mr Joyce’s press conference on Saturday afternoon.
For example ABC News 24 removed its online streaming geo-block yesterday evening, in order for those outside Australia to keep up-to-date with the latest information.
- Nine News on Ninemsn.com.au
The Nine Network in Australia (which produces QANTAS‘ in-flight news service) broadcast a special bulletin on the crisis last night at 7:30PM, which was also available as a live stream on www.ninemsn.com.au globally.
The ABC has broadcast a special 7:30 program tonight, which was also simulcast on ABC News 24. In addition, ABC Local Radio had a special Sunday edition of its flagship PM news program.
Sky News Australia‘s PM Live program with host Paul Murray is also to broadcast a special edition of the program tonight covering the crisis.
As news broke of the grounding yesterday, the BBC‘s news website led with the QANTAS news and CNN.com (International edition) had a breaking news bar inserted on its homepage. There has also been coverage on CNN TV and on CBSNEWS.com.
Non-English websites have also carried coverage of the strike action with Yahoo! Japan and Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun (Newspaper) websites covering the story (QANTAS has flights to Tokyo’s Narita Airport from Sydney).
- Mainichi Shimbun
There continues to be an explosion of news and comment through social media, in particular on QANTAS’ Facebook page and on Twitter.