From the CEO
If you fly with Qantas regularly, you’ve heard our crew make announcements encouraging people to donate any spare foreign currency to UNICEF’s Change for Good program.
The relationship between Qantas and Change for Good is 25 years old this month. I love the story of how it started back in 1991. Aussie businessman Tim Green noticed he always returned from overseas trips with pockets full of loose change from the countries he’d been to. He figured a lot of other passengers did, too, and had a brainwave to put Qantas in touch with UNICEF.
Where do your donations go? There’s a Counting House where volunteers from our crew sort the money before giving it to UNICEF (see page 38). We receive some unusual items, too – the team came across a pair of wedding rings once. But what might literally be small change adds up when you multiply it by the kindness of all the people who fly Qantas.
To date, we’ve raised about $31 million for UNICEF programs that make a difference to kids in developing countries, including clean water and life-saving vaccinations. Some of our crew are so passionate that they’ve visited projects in South Africa and Myanmar to see the impact of the donations firsthand.
UNICEF tells us the QantasChange for Good partnership is the one that’s had the most impact around the world. None of it would be possible without your generosity – so thank you.
The program has been a constant at Qantas for a quarter of a century but so many aspects of air travel have changed in that time. Take inflight entertainment and connectivity. Back in 1991, you may have watched Robin
Hood: Prince of Thieves projected onto a wall at the front of the cabin. Fast-forward to 2016 and we’re about to install free inflight wi-fi: 125 kilos of equipment per aircraft that will give you speeds up to 10 times faster than the aviation industry average so you can stream films, TV and sport.
Wi-fi will also enable our crew to receive live weather updates and stream data about the aircraft to our operations centre. If you caught the recent documentary about Qantas,
Ready for Takeoff, on Channel 9, you know how important that information can be to make things run smoothly.
Of course, your experience of travelling with Qantas should be seamless. But we know there’s a lot of interest in what’s required to safely operate almost 500 flights a day and it’s always fascinating to look behind the scenes. Apart from the technical complexity, what I take away from it is the skill, composure and effort our people bring to the job every day – as well as going above and beyond for initiatives like Change for Good.