From Today's SMH
Growing pilot shortage brings Qantas regional services down to earth
THE nationwide pilot shortage has forced QantasLink to announce the sudden cancellation of some of its regional services, fuelling fears the crisis could soon hit the larger domestic carriers.
Days after the Qantas chief executive, Geoff Dixon, warned that the lack of available pilots had hit its regional subsidiary, QantasLink yesterday announced its "higher than normal pilot attrition rate" would result in the suspension of some services on its NSW and Queensland routes.
QantasLink's chief executive, Narendra Kumar, said the airline would suspend its six weekly services between Sydney and Newcastle and make changes to flights on its Armidale, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Moree and Narrabri routes. The airline also announced the suspension of services between Brisbane and Mackay and a scaling back of its services to Hervey Bay.
The suspension of QantasLink flights follows the desperate measures already taken by some of its smaller competitors, such as Regional Express, which have been forced to cancel some of their routes since last year. Rex has already been forced to look for pilots as far afield as Ukraine and has warned that Australia will need a further 1800 airline pilots by late next year to keep up with the growth of the airline industry.
The crisis has largely been blamed on pilots being poached from regional airlines - where the pay is relatively low - with attractive packages from larger carriers. But Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Blue have all downplayed the risks of a crisis, arguing their increased involvement in pilot training schemes would ensure there will be a big enough pool of trained pilots to draw from in future.
However, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots has warned the airlines are losing experience in the cockpit. "We don't believe that there will be enough experience levels to take up what they are losing on the other side," warned the union's Lawrie Cox.
Virgin Blue, Qantas, Tiger and Jetstar have drawn heavily on the nation's regional pilot base to fill their ranks.
