Folks,
Wombat Watcher has a number of the points right, there are more. It was no dummy spit, Westwood had almost 100% backing.
Greame Cant devoted an extraordinary amount of his private life to the welfare of his fellow pilots, from the time he was a S/O until he retired. How many of you have done that ???
I was there, in the middle of the whole thing, it became impossible to live with the domestic's attitude.
Qantas had to live with cost competition in the real world, not the cosy two airline policy world of Ansett and the National Airlines Commission ( by whatever trading name at the time).
Going along with "AFAP Policy" would have made QF hopelessly uncompetitive.
Ansett is gone, and Australian Airlines was broke when QF took it over, is there a message here somewhere.
Tootle pip!!
PS: AFAP did have one big win, the introduction of the "North American Contract" in the '60's.