Perhaps the professor believes that the Jetstar International wages are realistic and if that is the case he can go and work for them.
As long as pilots in airlines behave in the GA manor no ones wages will ever rise. The next start up will pay the pilots even less and they will accept it, just to get the jobs. And as history has shown us with Virgin Blue and now Jetstar, the promise of it improving pay and conditions once the airline has bedded in is utter fallacy.
It is true that we live in an economic rationalist world and airlines will from now on give the flying to lowest bidder. But from now on there is a new bench mark that all wide body pilots in Australia will have to work from and it will be very hard to break.
If the rumors come to fruition then I have bridge I want to sell to the JPC. Don't tell me, Jetstar threatened to set up a green field operation or was it that they would give the flying to Jetconnect. If you tell me the business case didn't stack up for better pay I think you need a Becks and a lye down. The business case never seems to get in the way of the execs self managed company funded largess.
You already are the lowest paid airline pilots, Jetstar were or are never going to give the flying to anyone else.