The 'stove pipe' is expensive during times of growth (now), but one reason it exists is so that junior pilots can progress to higher paid jobs (generally on bigger aircraft and/or command positions) in line with their growing experience . The Air NZ (and Link) pay structure recognises this, unlike some airlines that pay the same ammount regardless of aircraft size (within limits). If Air NZ had to pay 737 f/o's the same as 747 f/o's, their overall crew costs would be huge, and surely diminish any savings they would make from trying to keep people from moving seats. As well, stagnation/boredom is not good for maintaining standards, or staff retention (hence the high turnover of staff at LCCs).
Generally, over the career of an Air NZ pilot, they will move seats once every 5-8 years - hardly what you would call seat hopping. Since joining the company over 7 years ago I have had one seat (on the lowest pay band). The next few years growth are an anomoly of the (good) times.
MOR - your vast overseas experience would be welcome at any airline (if accompanied by the right attitude), including Air NZ, and it is the vast experience of new hires that give Air NZ a very high cockpit experience level compared to the airlines of Europe/Asia etc. It would not be uncommon for a 767 cockpit to have a 20,000 hour captain, 15,000 hour f/o and 10,000 hour s/o!
Recruitment in NZ is generally a case of over-supply and under-demand. NZ punches above it's weight in turning out pilots, thus at any time Air NZ has several hundred pilots on it's books, each with thousands of hours. If you only need 8 guys for an interview, and you have 300 to choose from, experience/hours/command time etc becomes a major point through which to weed them out. The interview process then goes about finding the best fitting person for the job in terms of personality and CRM/crew-suitability.
Splitting the fleets into different operations/companies creates overheads in other areas, so what do you achieve?
The airline industry is like no other, where a lack of experience, skill or judgement in the critical places (flight operations, engineering) means people could die. Non-airline people struggle with this concept.
BTW, the much-used/abused comments re the $800M handout from the goverment convieniently forgets a few things. It was not a cash handout or gift - the goverment re-capitalised the company through the aquisition of shares (about 82%). It's balance sheet was buggered by the Ansett mess - certainly a bad management decision coupled with goverment (on both sides of the ditch) interference. But the failure of the airline would have meant a failure of the NZ tourism industry, and in turn the economy. For a country the size of NZ, think of Air NZ as an arm of the tourism industry owned like a co-op with the stakeholders being the NZ public. Tourism is THAT important to NZ. The company was trading profitably at the time of the Ansett collapse, and has done very well - with new management - since. I understand the debt/equity ratio is now down to about 65% from over 90% at the time of the near collapse.