Calm down people! Think you missed my point, or perhaps I didn’t explain it well.
QF needs to pay Mainline SOs more than subsidiary FOs in order to attract the experienced and proven operators within the group to move to the back seat. I wasn’t talking about the responsibilities of the job as such - I’ve done both, I know which one is harder! Without a little pay rise, why else would you move, given slow progression in Mainline and lower job satisfaction as an SO.
By doing this, Qantas then creates a hole at the bottom and will feed the new Cadets into QLink, NAA, etc. Once they have 5 years jet/turboprop time they too might choose to jump to mainline as SOs. The cycle repeats.