Originally Posted by
Gazza mate
1. The qantas business success is heavily reliant on their safety record. This is why passengers fly qantas. Their safety record is thanks to the current long serving loyal pilots. They’re a known quantity with a proven track record. For Qf to put their trust is a whole new group of unknown pilots is very risky for the business long term.
That hasn’t stopped them from using a myriad of external entities/crewing companies now. For the general public they wouldn’t know/care/understand whether or not the ones sitting in the front are on the mainline seniority list or not. From the companies perspective they will be engaging pilots who are already experienced with Airbus, international and long flying.
2. Who would they find to fly in the new entity? They’ve mentioned the flood of contract pilots from China. These guys are proven mercenaries. In three years time when the carona virus is history, the past boom in international will have returned plus the back log of delayed travellers. China will be offering eye watering contracts which these mercenaries will find impossible to resist, especially compared to the poor conditions offered by project sunrise
At the moment quite a few international widebody expat Captains and FO’s are willing to come back and work on even 787 SO conditions. They’d love the chance to jump at DEC and DEFO positions. There’s more to life than money, but $400k AUD is great money and they’ll almost certainly be flying less fatiguing rosters on the 350 than their current expat contracts. Add to that working under western industrial protections and regulations. And the chance to spend more time at home.
Add to that the great number of Australian Airbus pilots both in and out of the group, plus all the regular sources of crew (regionals, GA, other airlines) who can be trained to fly it? Yeah there will be no problem in finding crew.
There’s very few pilots in the wider industry who would describe the proposed sunrise conditions as “poor”. Maybe compared to 380 legacy, but if anyone thinks every other capable airline pilot in the world would knock back sunrise because it’s slightly worse than the 380 then they’re living in a bubble.