Originally Posted by galdian
On a different note - am I hallucinating or did I recently read that
VB have FIRM orders for 3 aircraft and OPTIONS on another 7 which they will finally decide on EARLY NEXT YEAR??
This must be for 737s. There are a fair few Embraers coming in this year for
VB and VOz has 7 orders for 777-300ERs with 6 options (either 3 this year or 2 and one in Jan 09).
Originally Posted by Jetblues
Do we all see it succeeding, yes but the stakes are high. So as far as the operation, including crewing is concerned it needed to be set up independently for the financial security of the
VB Domestic operation.
Do we think that the vast majority of the seats in VAustralia will be filled with current
VB pilots, the optimist says yes, the pessimist says no and the truth is that nobody knows. Time will tell.
Word on the street is that almost all of the operational side of VOz is being fully segregated from the main
VB business to ensure that if it fails, the
VB operation is protected. There are appartently some areas of the business like Finance, IT, People (cough) that are being shared across both companies.
My understanding is that the EBA Deed says that for the first 7 VOz aircraft, 4 7ths of the Command slots are to be offered to
VB Captains. So if you assume say 6 crew per aircraft, that's a total of 42 Command slots (for all the aircraft ordered so far - 18 Command slots for start of operations) of which 24 are offered to
VB Captains.
How many current
VB Captains are rated on the 777? One captain I spoke to the other day said there was only 2 in
VB. So if you look at the start-up of VOz, surely they aren't going to be putting newly rated, non-type experienced Captains on the new aircraft for start-up. They'll bring in an experienced group of Captains for the start (further required since the top two in the company have never flown the 777 even in a Sim) and the
VB Captains will get access to their slots "later" down the track once the first 3 aircraft are up and running.
Could be a little bit of a wait for the
VB Captains to get a gurnsey yet me thinks...