This statement by Joyce is laying the ground for blaming the mainline pilots for the cancellation of 'Project Sunrise' . If you think how he used a confected fight with the Perth airport authorities over A330 to JNB and now B787 to Paris you will understand the mechanisms at play here.
This is of course BS of the highest order - the project has been on the backburner internally in QF for sometime.
To wit:
- AIPA have not been in specific negotiations over the new type and discussions to date have only been of a general nature. I confirmed this with a COM member today. He did concede that its possible that Joyce is setting up AIPA as a patsy so he can then use the Jetconnect pilot group to crew the 'Sunrise' aircraft, although this is the less likely scenario.
- The flight operations management personnel involved in the project (most notably RG) were pulled of it nearly four months ago. Right now there is no input into anything resembling development for a new type for mainline.
Expect several more leaks over the next month or so culminating in the above narrative being trotted out. So pathetic and so utterly predictable.