genex. Fair enough. I tend to agree that we won't see many/any 457 visas. The reality is that these were a bogey man and I suspect their use will be quite limited.
I do disagree on a point about expat pilots. Traditionally we have sent our guys o/s to airlines that had NO home grown ability to develop their own pilots. Emirates, CX, Qatar, Royal Brunei, etc have no GA industry in their location to support the development of their crew. Therefore they had no experienced pilots to draw upon and thus crew for these carriers came from all nations. This is a very different thing to Australia where we still have a number of quite experienced aircrew in GA- and continue to train them- to draw upon before considering foreign crew. I'm not adverse to foreign pilots but using foreigners to keep pressure on lower pay and conditions of local people isn't right. If 457 visas are used then there certainly are F/Os missing out on upgrades....all members of the QF group too! See my next point for more on that.
permFO. There are at least eight hundred pilots in Australia with multiple thousands of hours on heavy metal who could immediately upgrade to command if only J* were prepared to pay more- and QF prepared to release them. That would solve some of the 'experience' issues that some seem so concerned about- concerned enough to be sending recruiters to foreign shores to find suitably qualified personnel. The truly sad thing is that many of us are only too well aware of the opportunities being offered to people who aren't even members of the QF group- or those that have become members of the group within the last couple of years- whilst those with many years service behind them are ignored and marginalised. Ironic that Joyce bangs on about 'leveraging the considerable experience of Qantas' to expand J* into Singapore and Viet Nam whilst at the same time excluding from his mind the possibility that mainline pilots make up a very significant part of that 'considerable experience' that he continually bangs on about.
The reality is that were J* F/O slots opened up around the QF Group in the immediate aftermath of J* kicking off- and the same for subsequent command slots once all the Impulse F/Os had their opportunity for upgrade to command- then we wouldn't be talking about F/Os having too little experience for upgrade. They would have had five or six years online as S/Os and F/Os by now. It may have also minimised those like TCAS Shenanigans who are only passing through.