Whittaker will be laughing away at the infighting that is going on.
Broadly speaking he has two aims to achieve. One is get rid of the SO pay scale. On current numbers that will save about 100k per pilot. How many SOs these days? 2-300? So there is 20-30 MILLION per year that he saves. The second aim is to reduce the power of the pilot group. Getting the Link guys into the jet CEA gives him a voting block of about 600 or so that have wildly different terms and conditions. A small carrot dangled to the Links gives him a third of the total pilot numbers, he doesn’t need many more to get contract chang through. We already have big problems in jet with the disparate working conditions of long haul and short haul. Generally the long haul guys I speak to have no real idea of the conditions on the Bus, and nor do they often care as their career choice means they will never fly the thing.
There are so many downsides to this whole thing, and no upside that improves on 70:30 hiring. We will never see an experienced external apply again (including RNZAF) because they see that they start off behind 600 Link pilots. We will see the loss of a well paid role by getting rid of SO to be replaced by cadets. I could go on all day, suffice to say there is one beneficiary from this plan, and it isn’t a pilot.