Paying back domestic flying?:
When Ansett went under and thousands of passengers were stranded all over Australia, it became clear that Qantas SH did not have the numbers of crew, or aircraft to be able to cope with the amount of extra traffic. Due to this extraordinary change in flying, SH basically asked LH if they would use their crew and aircraft to help cope with the extra flying. LH crew, flew on their days off, and their holidays to help assist at this terrible time. Jumbos did shuttles up and down the coasts to rescue stranded passengers. Everyone, SH & LH, did what ever they could to help out.
At no time was any indication given that this "extra" flying would need to be "repaid".
Move forward a year: Jetconnect aka Qantas New Zealand, is given flying that 'belonged" to QF SH. As payment, Qantas management hand over AKL trips to SH- taking them from LH. The SH union calls this 'catchup footy"- implying it is to repay SH for the flying they 'lost' during the collapse of Ansett, instead of a payback for flying lost to Jetconnect.
Perhaps in overall terms, the loss of a few AKL trips wasn't a huge amount to LH, however, for MEL based crew, this was 25% of their flying. Pretty significant a loss don't you think? Maybe worth a trip to the commission, maybe not - depends on your point of view.
Now, we have another aircraft that both divisions are endorsed to fly. There is nothing in either EBA to say who should fly this particular aircraft where. Unfortunately for all of us, from the company's point of view- the longhaul award appears cheaper to run shorthaul - and vice versa. (Although when this was brought up in the Commission, Qantas insisted that cost had no bearing, and in fact the two divisions cost the roughly the same to run on the AKL for example.)
Some joined Qantas as a longhaul flight attendants and have NO desire to fly shorthaul. Others joined as shorthaul flight attendants and have NO desire to fly longhaul. I just hope that greed from both sides doesn't mean that all our choices disappear.