From our fearless leader Narenrda Kumar:
QantasLink announced today that it will be making some changes to its scheduled overnight Maintenance Operations performed on Dash 8 aircraft at its Brisbane base. Until recently QantasLink utilised up to three Dash 8 maintenance bays in the Brisbane Qantas Engineering Hangar 2 facility, while Qantas utilised the remainder for B737 maintenance. From July 2011 Qantas Engineering will require the majority of the Hangar 2 parking space to meet the growth of their fleet and it will subsequently no longer be available for QantasLink scheduled maintenance. In addition, the QantasLink Dash 8 fleet is scheduled to grow significantly over the next 5 years due to customer demand into and out of regional and mining locations. This growth has the potential to increase its Q400 fleet including its operations in Queensland. In light of this, QantasLink conducted a detailed review of our Dash 8 fleet maintenance requirements across the Australia wide operation along with the impact of losing access to the Brisbane Hangar 2 facility. The review considered all options, including the construction of a new hangar, the lease or purchase of an existing hangar and the distribution of scheduled maintenance to CASA approved locations other than Brisbane. The review has now been completed and in order to meet our maintenance needs, QantasLink will introduce a distributed maintenance model including two 3rd party CASA approved Queensland locations (CNS and TSV) and increase utilisation of our new hangar facilities in Canberra. By leveraging external suppliers in CNS and TSV, combined with utilisation of QantasLink Hangar facilities in Canberra, we will have the flexibility and scalability of maintenance supply that we require to meet our growing operational needs. Brisbane will continue to conduct essential daytime line maintenance activities (including transit, ramp service checks and defect rectification where required).
Line maintenance coverage in Brisbane will be provided from 5.30am to 12 midnight, ensuring that some maintenance work can be performed at night to ensure that aircraft are ready for the first flight out the next day. However, scheduled overnight maintenance, including major component replacements will no longer take place in Brisbane. QantasLink maintenance activities conducted in Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Cairns are not affected by the planned changes. A number of LAME positions in Brisbane will be impacted by this decision. However the majority of QantasLink employees, including many Line Maintenance employees, will not be affected by this change. This change does not form part of the recent management redundancy program. We are committed to maintaining business as usual and supporting our people through this process. Please contact your manager if you have any questions. Narendra Kumar, Executive Manager Qantas Regional Airlines Group