Originally Posted by
Slezy9
You mean like Air NZ just did?
I think I’m going to have to spell this out another time, because I seem to be doing it every couple of posts on this thread:
New Zealand is not Australia
The law in New Zealand is different to Australia, as evidenced by this statement from an IR Law firm below:
Unlike Australia, there are no stand down provisions in New Zealand.
Employment Law Issues with Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Staff in Australia can be stood down, whereas staff in NZ can’t.
So whatever is happening in Air New Zealand is irrelevant because it’s a different country with different law.
They won’t fill the vacated SH F/O role with ‘someone else’. It’ll be left blank and empty. There will be enough pilots left in SH to cover the planned flying for at least the next 12 months. Perhaps as much as 18 months depending on vaccine production. Certainly long enough to start bringing pilots back on from CR.
SH has always been the most flexible fleet. If the 330 is flying less domestically and trans Tasman that may be cause to stand up more 737 crew. As well as return of demand in the domestic market. Don’t forget these forecasts are being done for the next 2-3 years. No one, not even the fortune tellers of PPrune, can predict what will happen over the next 2-3 years. On an earlier post I mentioned a 50% capacity return in Europe just weeks after lockdowns were lifted, 80% capacity return in China a few months after lockdowns and a return to full capacity in Japan expected within a few months. Short haul domestic flying is returning fairly rapidly over northern summer, and I’d expect it to return here as the seasons improve as well. International a different story. I think it’s very plausible (and totally legal) for the company to state no SH crew surplus is forecast at all over the next few years, ie no redundancy.