Barry
PB is not involved. If he was, no-one would go to work for that company for all the obvious reasons.
Like Keg, I know the guys involved and I can vouch for them in terms of their integrity and the genuine reasons for setting up a new crewing company. I am not involved personally with the company BTW.
The bottom line is that there will be 700 mainline jobs gone by 2015, based on fleet retirements. Qantas can agree to all of AIPA's demands tomorrow, including scope, and it won't matter a tinkers cuss because QF international, as a business, will not survive given what is being done to it by senior management.
All the Longreach guys are trying to do is provide options, offshore (not in Aust) for those crew who are going to be made redundant.
The desire is to do this in a way which is different then the other crewing companies out there (Parc, Rishworth ect ect) which looks after the pilots better from a administrative, tax and welfare perspective.
There is no conspiracy.