Originally Posted by
Overspeed1
If they run the 74 RIN why would they need to heavy crew? Any training positions allocated would be kicked down the road until there’s flying available to facilitate so those crews stay stood down for a while.
I think this is directed at my post? Not 100% sure.
The two issues are separate. The RIN should be run regardless given the previously articulated time frame for the 747 farewell. If there is ‘useful flying’ on any of the other LH fleets (even if it’s 1/2 or 1/3 of the normal hours) then a RIN’d 747 crew member electing to go to that fleet should be stood up and trained. Deal with any surplus on that fleet once that is complete.
My ‘heavy crew’ comments were in relation to the alleged difficulty of getting rid of the bottom 300 crew (if that’s what was deemed surplus to requirements). I’m simply pointing out that resorting to heavy crewing makes it decidedly simple to still crew those aeroplanes on longer flights until the fleet flying hours get beyond about 2/3 of the previous flown hours. It’s certainly easier and cheaper than the domino effect of doing multiple RINs across multiple fleets as the crew all push downward. Redundancy payouts for 300 pilots is going to be circa $20 million.
The F/O demoted quickly and easily to S/O with a sim (it wouldn’t even take that realistically) isn’t quite as clear cut. That demoted F/O may choose to become a S/O on a different fleet- a massive training cost. Again, cheaper to heavy crew and not demote people.
I don’t think Qantas wants to go down the redundancy road though. They don’t want to spend $20 million only to re-employ those crew a year or two later. Much easier to come to an agreement with current crew as to how to manage our way through this.