The first Mainline pilot redundancy will signal the beginning of the recovery.
Lol @ Directanywhere. He/she is probably spot on the money.
I've told this story a couple of times previously on PPRUNE but in April '94 they gathered a bunch of the cadets to Sydney and told us that employment with QF was 3-5 years away so go and enjoy life and if we were still available when QF called in that time frame then well and good. QF employed the first cadet two months later and all 80+ of us were in by the following January.
Two years ago when QF was forecasting unprecedented training over the next few years a number of us on the line started to get very nervous. They've predicted that a couple of times before- late 2000, early 2001 was the one time. If Ansett hadn't fallen over they would have been spectacularly wrong. Another time was just before SARs and things got pretty quiet post that too. QF generally start employing and promoting crew 3-6 months too late, why should their decisions be any different now.
Waren9, not sure what you're asking me about. Will I take an MOU slot? No. Taking a 20% pay cut to do what I'm doing now won't thrill the missus or the bank manager. Would I do it to save a S/O? Not sure how that actually works out. I've said my piece elsewhere about how I felt I could support S/Os.
All that aside, given my place in the seniority pile there are plenty of guys that could take advantage of the MoU for a promotion and actually earn more than they do now. Will they do it? Dunno, I've been on leave for the last 8 1/2 weeks so I haven't spoken to anyone on the line for quite a while.
Remember too it was only 18 months or so ago that the then CP would not release any QF crew to fly under the MoU, despite more than a couple wanting to take that option.