Jetstar backs Senate safety inquiry into pilot training | The Australian
Steve Creedy From: The Australian October 15, 2010 12:00AM
JETSTAR chief Bruce Buchanan welcomes a Senate inquiry into pilot training and incident reporting as a chance to get facts on the table.
Mr Buchanan said this week that the Qantas Group would be putting a submission to the inquiry that would cover Qantas, Jetstar and QantasLink.
It would also be happy to send representatives to the inquiry if required.
"It's good to get the facts out," Mr Buchanan said. "What we need to separate here is what's the union political agenda and what's the real issues on the table. And there are real issues and it's good to get them out on the table and debate and discuss them."
The Senate committee inquiry was championed by independent senator Nick Xenophon and will look at several issues hotly debated by pilots.
These include the consequences for safety from reductions in pilot flight hour requirements, as well as whether Australia should adopt recent US requirements that a pilot operating regular public transport (RPT) services has at least 1500 flight hours.
It will also look at how regulators are dealing with advancing technology, pilot recruitment, and whether pay-for-training schemes affect safety and incident reporting in Australia.
Mr Buchanan said some of the issues reported during the debate on training had lacked substance and were misleading.
He had no problem with changes if something was not right, but the debate so far had not pointed to "anything of substance that we can see at the moment".
He found that many of the matters being wound into the debate, such as a 2007 Jetstar incident and commentary about pilots reporting directly to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, were bizarre. "That's what got us into hot water -- we copied word-for-word what the pilots reported to us and gave it to the ATSB," Mr Buchanan said.
"It was only internal checking that actually registered an anomaly. The concept of a pilot having free access to the ATSB was what occurred in this instance."
Mr Buchanan rejected inferences that it was somehow in the interest of airlines to bypass safety. He said the Qantas Group had always been a passionate believer that safety was the first priority.
Unions also have been expressing fears that Jetstar is using its pan-Asian network to slash wages and conditions.
Mr Buchanan called for debate about the broader prospects for Australian aviation and what that meant in terms of a strong local base.
"We're in a business where we've got declining market share in international traffic and declining relevancy," he said. "That should be the bigger concern for the unions and the employees.
"We as a nation, if we're not careful, will cease to be competitive with the rest of the world."
He said competitiveness was not about safety, which was one of the Qantas Group's competitive strengths. "Competitiveness is about how we band together and create a stronger, viable business . . . and also the flow-on benefits to the rest of the tourism industry," he said.