PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - QF Group possible Redundancy Numbers/Packages
Old 31st Aug 2020, 03:00
  #1708 (permalink)  
dr dre
 
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Originally Posted by Wingspar
It’s interesting in a recent interview with Bloomberg (20/08/20), AJ said the following;

It’s a sensible decision to assume the 380’s and 777’s(787’s) need to be parked for at least a year and so we can save the costs associated with those aircraft and help reduce the cash burn for our international business.”

I think AJ contradicted himself there and let the cat out of the bag by declaring it was a ‘decision’ to ground the 380 and 787 fleet purely to reduce long term cash burn. In regards to labor, it might satisfy stand down provisions now but would appear the long term grounding of these fleets is a commercial decision by QF and based on that, won’t satisfy stand down provisions post restrictions being lifted.
One could say as there are state backed international carriers flying near empty aircraft into Australia doing some repatriation now then it is a purely commercial decision for Qantas to have international fleets grounded at the moment, so therefore there’s no reason for stand downs currently. Of course no one believes this is the case.

The initial reasoning for stand downs was not closing of borders anyway, it was the massive and almost immediate drop off in passenger demand due pandemic fears. It could be argued that stand downs can be enacted until passengers numbers return to similar pre Covid levels. Fair Work has made comments indicating they’ll be giving employers flexibility as needed to ensure they stay in business, and that’s what the government will surely want.

Here’s an interesting quote from an employment law firm:

A force majeure clause will almost certainly have a list of specific triggering events, and may also contain a catch-all provision such as ‘and any causes beyond the reasonable control of the party’.

Triggering events include acts of God (earthquakes, storms, flood, and lightning strikes), war, terrorism, riot, insurrection and (sometimes) industrial action. Pandemic is unlikely to be listed in an existing clause although case law does support the inclusion. More about that later.

Force majeure events are required to be outside the reasonable control of a party claiming the event has occurred.

Once invoked, the clause will provide that the parties’ obligations under the contract will be suspended until the force majeure event (and its direct effects) have ceased to prevent performance of the contract.
Could that possibly give weight to the pandemic being the key event that triggered the stand down, not border restrictions, and the ending of the pandemic is the point where the triggering event is considered “over”?

Even if the status of the border is the key point I doubt whether the border will be open to the point where it was in December 2019. It will come back incrementally over a few years and I’d expect by the time that happens passengers numbers should have returned close to normal.

Last edited by dr dre; 31st Aug 2020 at 04:37.
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