I believe you are correct Newsensation, my memory of the events were Australian Airlines/TAA fully owned EAA at the time and I think a large percentage of Sunstate.
EAA had an intergration case running at the time with Australian Airlines/TAA, QANTAS then purchased Australian Airlines/TAA.
After that purchase QANTAS had exactly the same relationship with TAA/Australian Airlines as TAA had with EAA.
That being QANTAS fully owned TAA/Australian, and TAA/Australian fully owned EAA.
Now many of the pilots in Australian/TAA had previously missed out on QANTAS interviews or didn't have the desired requirements to be accepted into QANTAS, just the same as many of the Regional pilots.
However AIPA accepted the TAA/Australian pilots without question, they then backed the companies view and didn't want anything to do with the regionals.
There was a token 200 numbers that were withdrawn after a period of time.
I can still recall the President at the time saying at one of hearings, "they are good turbo prop pilots but wouldn't make good JET pilots".
That was 15 years ago and the same process is repeating itself, AIPA didn't want anything to do with Jetstar, as they thought they would still get all the jet flying.
Now they are expanding they feel threatened, and they want a part of the action.
Once again nothing really has been mentioned about the Regionals, at this stage they are still only flying the turbo props, however take a close look at the latest C series Bombardier, starts at 110 seats goes all the way up to 149 seats.
The 737-400's are going out of service and the 717 are nearing the end of their life, these things are being looked at as I speak.
I can gaurantee that unless some sort of intergrated list is sorted prior to an announcement regarding the C series, the Regionals will tell AIPA to go and jump.
Remember these things go up to 149 seats, the jet rate is in the current EBA.
What better way for managemnt to reduce the Short Haul cost structure than to place these C Series into the Regionals.
When it does happen don't blame the Regionals for reducing the overall payrate in the industry as you do Jetstar, this was created by AIPA many years ago with there attitude BUGGER THE REST.
