The staff component wasn't broken down any further but I would conservatively estimate the pilot salaries to be 25% of the total salaries cost. This would make the pilot salaries 33% of the aircraft's operating costs - way more than the 4% figure bandied about in these forums!
Lol, you are a dead set genius. Did you borrow Alan's calculator to figure all that out?
Let's look at one small part of the operating cost - fuel. The 767 burns about 5000 kg per hour. Assume QF pay 70c/litre, so that's about $4500 per hour in fuel. So assuming the FO earns 60% of a Captains wage, and our wages combined are 33% of operating costs, a QF Captain must earn at least $1406 an hour. Of course, we haven't included all the other costs such as maintenance, catering, cabin crew etc etc - so a Capt must actually be on even more than this.
Hey, I've got an idea to reduce staff costs. Why don't you go and find another job that's more suited to your capabilities, because I don't think Qantas is really getting value for money from you. And give yourself an uppercut on the way out.
"Qantas' staff costs in the 2002-2003 year were 28% of its total expenses - the highest in the South-East Asian region.
By contrast, airlines such as Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific are purely international, although they do have some short-haul international routes. In both cases, their labor costs are approx 21% of total costs - much lower than that for Qantas.
So how much of that 7% gap is the result of having duplicate sets of infrastructure for different parts of the group? 2 Flight Ops, 2 Safety departments, 2 training departments etc etc. And the additional layers of management to oversee both sets of infrastructure. Why don't you start looking there before demanding staff take a paycut?