Qantas begins auctions of Boeing 747 memorabilia

Come for the articles, stay to learn a new word and expand your vocabulary.

Ah-hum!  Google says it means "a pretty girl or woman".   Has Qantas found a new way to soften the blow for 'qualifying' staff being laid-off (i.e. retrenched)?

OMG, look at the time, beer o'clock.

You're looking at the wrong definition, it's actually a Yiddish word (!) which means decorative little trinkets, souvenirs, knick-knacks etc.  As a person of European Jewish descent I'm impressed to see it used here!

It's actually misused in the sentence in the article, IMHO. Tchotchke is singular - so a business class trolley would be a Qantas Tchotchke. (referring to a woman as a tchotcke is mysoginistic in current vernacular like she's a trinket on the arm of some ageing dude!) The plural would apply here when referring to Qantas merch' up for auction: Tchotchkes. There is also the more playful "tchotchkela" E.G. From the New York Mag 1992 review of Zabar: "When Sam Cohen, 40 years a fish cutter, says to a pretty young customer, "Come , let me help you, mein tchotchkela," you know this store's roots go deep."

aren't they actually cheap flimsy foldaway things that they just put a nice towel on and top it full of booze so no one notices the trolley?

No, they're absolutely solid and hugely over-engineered (beautiful old-school Boeing!). We have two as tool boxes in the garage and they will outlast us!

My mate who works for QF got one of the 747 bar carts... all proceeds went to HARS museum.

If some proceeds of the sell-off go to HARS, I hope some will go to the Qantas Founders' Outback Museum in Longreach, as well. There aren't too many vistors at the moment as Queensland is cut off from its neighbours.

Visited the Longreach Qantas museum in early September and “Wing Walk” experience was booked out two months in advance.   Accommodation is a premium out there ATM with Queenslanders flocking to enjoy their best place in the world without being jostled by the usual hordes of Southern rubberneckers.    BTW ... Qantas provides NO financial input into this iconic destination.

I hope so. There aren't many other advantages to being QF staff these days...

Better perks than most passengers for years .... 

Hmmm, perhaps David was strategizing to get one for himself first (unless it was he who Fonga saw the other day !!).

Yeah, just like Alan Joyce supported the travelling public when he grounded the entire fleet leaving people stranded all over the world. People who were booked on flights to say a final goodbye to loved ones in their last moments, attend funerals or weddings, families who have saved for years for an overseas trip; all in an attempt to circumvent the fair work act and the bargaining rights of Australian workers.

Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of "redundancies" for positions that actually weren't redundant, but instead were shopped out to the Philippines, South Africa and New Zealand.

Time for us to support the airline that has a minimum 2 hour phone wait time when calling their South African based call center.

Qantas is no longer an Australian Airline Markspak, it simply operates with a Kangaroo on the tail and markets itself as our national carrier. Virgin is more loyal to this country than Qantas has been under Joyce. 

Thanks but i'll be supporting Virgin. 

This (https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/ChronQantas) makes interesting reading. As in life there are always two sides (at least) to every situation. Given Qantas has always employed many more people than Virgin due to its size; that Virgin is basically a foreign-owned company operating in Australia and will continue to be so after Bain Capital's buyout, and that any profits it makes in future will go to the US (rather than being like Qantas which is a min 51% Australian owned), you are basically swearing allegiance to a foreign company while decrying Qantas for being one (which is patently isn't). Food for thought, perhaps...

Hi iM,

You've actually kind of made my point for me. 
Virgin Airlines (Virgin Holdings), which was formally owned by (Virgin Group) ended up with a majority ownership by foreign investors including foreign airlines, which is currently the status quo, albeit different owners.  

Since starting up in Australia, they have bought lower airfares which forced Qantas to actually be a competitive company, they have employed tens of thousands of Australians and have kept pretty much everything in the country other than a percentage of dividends. 

They have a unionised workforce just like Qantas, however unlike Qantas they have bargained in good faith as required to do under the Fair Work Act.
At no point have I've never ever spent 2 hours on hold waiting to talk to a Virgin rep, not even close. 

Additionally, and I didn't raise this in my former post, Qantas (under Joyce) were found guilty and substantially fined for trying to create a cartel and fix freight costs which was a deliberate breach of anti competition laws. Virgin were not.

Qantas only exist because over the decades they were supported by Australians and the Australian government, yet at every turn, Alan Joyce seeks to outsource all that they can to circumvent labour laws at the expense of his employees and the travelling public. 

I can't argue with anything you've written because you've simply stated facts, however when you look at who has looked after Australia the most, I'd have to say that Virgin has done far more for Australia than Qantas has under Joyce.

That'd be the same TWU whose baggage handler members enjoyed a very cushy workplace and conditions, overstaffed and underworked like the worst of the 1980s?

"Tchoch-ka" with very little much stress on the 'T', more of a hard "ch" sound, and not a hard "a" in the "ka", more of just the "k as in key" sound.