as for the no lame preflt yes i think that will be back and with the new guy starting in feb i think we will see some changes....i beleive the domestic aircraft cleaners/aircraft workers are at aviation aust. getting task trained is this the start of "cat A" .....yep i think our world is about to change,dont forget the PPM was change in 2003 to include the "no lame preflt" but was never acted upon
domm butt monkey, I recall that when the then line manager Mr Deahm would come around to our section and say that QF will have no need for white shirts out on the tarmac. He is no longer around, nor those that succeeded him. It's 6 years since the PPM has changed to remove LAME's from the tarmac. I still can't see how cleaners, as short staffed as they are, are going to cope with the additional workload of are going to cope with the arrivals/departures, unless more are going to be employed, which kind of defeats the purpose of cutting the workforce or cutting costs to engineering.
It may be a domestic issue that they want LAME's replaced by cleaners/aircraft workers. I don't know how long it will last, if it does, but there will be major problems. Training people for a few days at Aviation Australia will not thoroughly prepare people with no aircraft maintenance background to arrive and depart aircraft. This task is an integrated task, and simply cannot be categorised to arrival, transit, defect rectification (if any), preflight, departure. It sounds great in theory, but we all know in practice it's not that easy, especially when people with next to no training are ariving and departing aircraft.
Speaking from an S.I.T. point of view, United Airlines tried this a few years ago, and it wasn't long before they reverted back to having the LAME's doing the transits and departures due to the communication problem between incoming pilot trying to advise of a problem, and that problem being relayed to engineering and an engineer finally coming to the aeroplane to see what was wrong. It was a costly exercise due to the delays or missed reports. Every airline at S.I.T. and I would safely say around the country in the least, have all transits/PREFLTS conducted by LAME's.
Anyway, the management team always seem to know better and think they can avoid the mistakes of others and make things work. When they don't, out comes the finger and the blaming starts because it wasn't given a chance to work.
We'll just have to wait and see what 2010 holds in store and what great big changes are going to take place.