For the Qantas guys out there..
With the LAME pay dispute recently, all Qantas's foreign operator line maintenance contracts were suspended. (talking mainly about MEL, SYD, BNE)
Any word of what customers Qantas will be taking back, and when? Also heard they don'y want to touch any B777's, to avoid extra licence payments to the LAME's. Any truth to that?
Cheers.
I have heard (for SYD) that BA wanted to come back, but QF would only do the 744 and not the 777. BA seemed a little puzzled about this, because they would still have to retain their 777 guys here to certify the 777's. Undoubtedly, these 777 guys would also have 744 licences. So at this stage, BA will still be doing their 744 and 777 transits for the forseeable future.
As for the other contracts, including ANZ, QF haven't said anything about this as yet, but I don't think they're in too much of a hurry for this either.
The engineer's dispute is still being blamed for the "loss" of contracts, but we all know this was a barrel of BS, because we lost 20 guys from SYD alone when QF told SQ where to go about 2-3 years ago, but we haven't lost any guys since telling all other foreign operators where to go earlier this year. The dispute has been over for a couple of months now, but is still being used as an excuse to clear QF's own backlog, which is well and truly under control now, but with the onslaught of the A380 and the draining of crews from both Base and Line, we are still unable to do other operators due to a lack of manpower.
I wouldn't be expecting any of the operators to be coming back before the New Year at the earliest. If QF aren't talking with the foreign operators or their own engineers, who knows what they're up to.
Maybe ANZ are better off getting their own guys here and telling QF to get their own guys in NZ to look after QF, QF NZ domestic and Jet connect. A little bit of their own medicine may smarten them up, but highly unlikely. I don't know of any medication to treat arrogance of the magnitude QF management disply.