Is This The End Of Heavy Maintenance Sydney

[sys 4]

Today a meeting was held at Sydney H.M. with all personal in which they were told of the 3 options that the Qantas board have before them in relation to their future with Qantas.Option 1 is that things stay as they are with mininmal changes
Option 2 is that they lose D checks to either Avalon or to an overseas MRO,with major retrenchments,shift change and restructure.
Option 3 is that all work is removed from Sydney is outsourced and everone is retrenched.full stop.The end of the line for engineering in Sydney.



Where does that leave Qantas in the future with a completely outsourced Heavy Maint,will QF pilots be happy to take Aircraft from other MRO's without a test flight first(will it be like Brisbane H.M in relation to their quality issues),will the flying public be happy that maint is no longer done by australians(will the spirit of australia be no more),where will QF management go to get them out the **** once all their current expertice is no longer there.Will the MRO they use be as flexible as their own current work force,and finally what will this really cost in the medium to long term.

[speedbirdhouse]

Quote-

"and finally what will this really cost in the medium to long term."


What we can only be sure of is that those running QF don't care.:mad: :yuk:

[Ultralights]

sounds like the exact same meeting i went to in 1992, 1996, and 2000..
its now 2005, and even though i havnt worked there since 2001, im sure things havnt changed much...


something about a 5 yr plan?

[sys 4]

there is profit there,about 1 billion dollars worth P/A

[Sunfish]

Bull**** baffles brains as the saying goes.

By portraying three options ranging from no change to complete "annihalation", you are being set up for the logical outcome - which is option number two.

I used the word "portraying" because the decision has already been made. No Board, especially not the Qantas Board, will ever tell you what it is "considering" because of the continuous corporate disclosure laws for one thing. I note that there is no media release about this matter although the ASX website is down with a technical fault.

When option two is finally announced as the "solution" everyone is expected to say "Geez that was lucky! It could have been so much worse!" and then meekly comply with whatever plan QF management has hatched.

Outsourcing everything overseas is a dumb idea because of the compliance and control costs for one thing but more importantly because it assumes that the exchange rates and labor costs are always going to be in your favour. More importantly still, it assumes that there is always going to be spare capacity at the time of your choosing. Even more importnatly, there is strategic defence issue associated with maintaining a pool of LAME's and a heavy maintenance and component overhaul capacity.

Boards love control anyway, and it is inconcievable that a board with any brains would outsource something overseas that is supposed to be part of their core competency and is also a reasonably large chunk of their total costs.

Option two also gives QF management more options for controlling maintenance costs by the use of each option, doing stuff in house or sending it overseas, as a threat to the other contractor. In other words, the folks at Avalon will be threatened by the spectre of a Chinese offshore contractor in Shenzen or wherever and vice versa.

So little Sunfish's guess is that option two will be rolled out with great fanfare sometime in the future.

[Ultralights]

in the 11 yrs i was at QF, we were threatened with loseing "D" checks to Avalon or Sasco every 2 yrs........, it never happened. (im not sure what the situation is since 2001)

[Going Boeing]

I understand that if QF decide to order the B777/B787 then Boeing has offered a deal involving no money up front, lease by the flight hour with Boeing doing all maintenance (ie done wherever Boeing can get it done the cheapest). The offer includes purchasing back all existing Boeing aircraft types and leasing them back under the same maintenance arrangements. If this was accepted by the board then Option 3 could very well happen. A very sad day for the engineering profession and all its members and a poor future for a proud airline which chose to get rid of its own engineering and quality assurance capability.