Originally Posted by
Troo believer
What’s that Bro? You can’t afford the interest on the loan. No worries Bro the government’s got this. Thanks Jacinda. Congrats btw on the election.
What's that mate? Can't afford to pay your staff mate? Just stand em down, and save a fortune on redundancy payouts, Jobkeeper will see 'em right.
Clearly this is an emotional topic for you. You can attack other Airlines all you want, but they'll each individually do what they can to survive. IF QF (or whichever Airline you fly/flew for) were 51% Government owned and thus given a loan facility I doubt you'd be here on your soapbox complaining about it.
Perhaps the contract should of gone to an Aussie carrier, but were any of them interested? Or was it not worth the cost of gearing back up and recalling crew from stand downs? From the (limited) media I've seen on this side of the ditch, AJ seems quite content to park everything (and everyone) until this is over.
Originally Posted by
Transition Layer
Fair enough. So if I’m correct, the backing of the NZ taxpayer combined with the backing of the AUS taxpayer, is keeping Air NZ pilots in the sky?
And in terms of the QF Group, it doesn’t explain why the Jetconnect crews in NZ are stood down sitting around doing no flying. What are they being paid?
And yes, the A330 is operating semi-regular freight services to SIN/HKG/NRT/PVG (I think?)
Honestly I'm not sure how much the Aussie contracts contribute to the revenue.
All I know is, we downsized to 70% for "post COVID" so at the moment we have a lot of Crew and Aircraft available. Can't stand us down, and too many redundancies would gut the Airline. (Reverse Seniority, would lose all/most A320 FO's). May as well fly freight to help offset costs... some of it's the Aussie Contract, some of it's the NZ Governments contract and the rest is just standard commercial freight. Some of those Freight Flights also have PAX, but it's controlled by Quarantine facility levels.
JetConnect aren't getting paid last I heard. They all "agreed" to be stood down. Currency for them is also going to be an issue I believe as they need to go to AUS for the Sims but then need to Quarantine on return, so it's possible the initial Tasman flying will be done by mainline Pilots as JC slowly stand crew up. But that's just me guessing.