Originally Posted by
donpizmeov
We are taught about Stockholm syndrome during EPs Perhaps this is another example.
Under AIPA watch domestic flying has been handed to subsidiary airlines with newer equipment and lesser conditions of service. This flying won't be coming back to mainline. This has reduced career progression at mainline.
The majority of international flying has been gifted to EK. Again newer equipment and better service. Compare seats to/from Australia per day between EK and QF. This market share will never be recovered. Again adversely affecting career progression.
The QF fleet age has placed QF in a perilous situation. Airframe order time and cost means this will be no easy fix. This adversely threatens QF careers.
Should we mention staff travel? Where new joining office dwellers have priority over long serving flight deck crew.
All that is entirely correct, but how exactly were AIPA - or the AFAP for that matter - going to prevent this?
PIA? Recall that the CEO was the darling of the business world at the time and PIA would have had almost zero public support. Don't forget, the pilots voted up the last 2 or 3 EA agreements to at least some degree based on the implied threats.
The CEO at the centre of these decisions (and his predecessor) specifically set out to remove the apparently costly staff (ignoring the benefits of having a loyal, motivated workforce) to outsource to less costly entities for the benefit of anyone but the staff (and not just pilots) or customers.
So what would the AFAP have done differently and prevented the declines mentioned in the quote?
As it turns out, even those outsourced entities are now in the firing line and there is no guarantee they'll be anymore successful than AIPA have been in dealing with a personally financially motivated senior executive 'team'. I hope they are but their best outcome will still be significantly inferior to mainline.