Qantas pilots lose union president after year of turbulence
The Qantas pilots’ union has punted its president for the second time since the Covid crisis erupted in early 2020.
Captain Murray Butt was reappointed as the Australian and International Pilots Association president in January, 2021, after previously holding the post from 2016 to 2018.
He replaced Boeing 737 pilot Mark Sedgman, who oversaw negotiations for new long haul and short haul agreements in 2019 and 2020 but struck turbulence when the pandemic took hold.
With hundreds of pilots made redundant and many more stood down, Captain Butt was part of a group made up of mostly A380 pilots who sought to gain control of AIPA’s powerful committee of management (CoM).
When Mr Sedgman’s executive team learned of plans to replace them, they resigned en masse, but Captain Butt’s tenure was to be short-lived.
Despite guiding AIPA through a difficult year with hundreds of pilots remaining stood down and working secondary jobs, Captain Butt was not re-elected to the CoM.
His replacement will not be appointed until the next scheduled meeting of the committee in February.
He would not comment on the shock election outcome on Tuesday, but it’s understood there were some misgivings among AIPA members about the disproportionate number of A380 pilots on the executive.
One pilot who spoke to The Australian on the condition of anonymity, said there was a sense that the AIPA had become more combative than collaborative with Qantas.
He said there had been too much time and energy spent exploring legal avenues against stand downs, instead of addressing issues such as the effect of long stints of isolation enforced upon pilots who continued to work through the pandemic.
“Hopefully with a committee that represents the fleet more broadly, we will get better representation,” said the pilot.
Qantas has 12 A380s in its fleet, of which two are being retired, 11 Boeing 787s, 28 A330s and 80 737s.
In coming years, the 737 fleet will be replaced with narrow body jets from the Airbus A320neo family and smaller A220s.
The shift would mean new enterprise agreements for pilots making the jump from 737s to A321XLRs as part of what Qantas called Project Winton.
Any negotiations could be undermined by turbulence within AIPA which suffered another blow earlier in the year, after losing the exclusive right to represent Qantas pilots.
The Fair Work Commission ruling found AIPA did not necessarily offer better representation than the Australian Federation of Air Pilots which hailed the judgment as a major victory.
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