Labor costs are one of the few costs an airline can control and the largest expense incurred by an airline.
This is true, but it is still only about 25% of total expenditure which for a often highly skilled labour intensive industry is not too bad.
Pilot costs are one of the most significant.
Not really, Pilot costs in QF make up about 15% of labour costs whilst making up about 9% of staff, not an unreasonable differential given the job responsibilities.
What it really boils down to is that even if you worked on the best case scenario for the company, lets say they can offshore and outsource and somehow reduce pilots wages/increase productivity to realise a 25% saving, it would actually mean 25% of 15% of 25% which equals a massive (not) saving of 0.9%.
So chuck away 90 years of piloting experience and destroy the publics faith in a fairly fundamental part of the Qantas brand by offshoring and lowering standards for what: 0.9%.
Has anyone on the board actually looked at the numbers? The very real risk of destroying the reputation of your most highly respected employees is that you will destroy or at least seriously damage your brand at the same time, lowering standards will also increase the risks of very expensive accidents and incidents, this has been proven time and time again.
Look at any crash comic over the last 10 years and the steady increase (as a % of accidents) of perfectly serviceable planes with all the EGPWS, and GPS and Moving Maps and Glass Cockpits etc just crashing for no real reason is starting to get quite obvious to all but the bean counters.
Planes taking of and crashing due to disorientation, Insanely unstable approaches continued ending in tragedies, Go Arounds attempted after reverse thrust pulled, Stalls and stickshakers are regular, some resulting in massive prangs other saved by the grace of god (but not the pilot), F%$Ked up go arounds, the list just goes on and on and on.
I'm not talking about complicated swiss cheese accidents that might involve some other factors (there but for the grace of god go I type stuff), I'm talking about basic GA type accidents in jets.
FOR 0.9%
They need their head read.
They need to be stopped!