Professor:
“I'll give you ten minutes to name any profession that would require that person to have sat and passed as many exams as I have.”
The market has no interest in how many exams you are required to complete.
The market is only interested in examining the cost of aircraft maintenance conducted by QF compared to the cost at competitor airlines in Australia and more importantly the wider region.
What exactly does the hefty premium paid to QF engineering staff get QF that staff from other carriers or maintenance organizations cant provide for less?
With the deepest respect Professor; since you joined this forum in 2005, you have consistently posted rubbish that demonstrates that you are an uneducated fool with their head stuck firmly up your backside.
Where did you get this idea that there is a hefty Premium paid to Qantas Engineering Staff??????? This is bullshyte!
To make such a comparison requires consideration of not just raw basic wages, but the hours actually worked and paid for at those rates.
You should be aware that the labour force used in some Asian businesses is Three times the size of an equivalent Australian workforce, which negates the cost advantage.
You should also be aware that the quality of the output is shyte, as has been demonstrated by the extensive rectification work required on Qantas Aircraft when they have returned from the tender ministrations of overseas MRO's.
You should also be aware that the Chinese have no loyalties outside family members, as demonstrated by numerous scandals such as the melamine in baby formula episode. The chances of the Chinese diligently and reliably following the exact tenets of an Airbus or Boeing maintenance manual are non existent. They will lie, cheat, and cut corners if it saves time and money as they do not have the same Western sense of responsibility and empathy that Westerners do.
Of course the first people to find that out will be some poor passengers when the rear pressure bulkhead fails at 30,000 feet and kills the lot of them - it will have magically undergone a twenty hour radiographic "inspection" for corrosion between midnight and dawn in some Chinese MRO years before.
That is the message Professor, it is overall
cost of ownership that matters, and if you skimp on quality it will come back and bite you on the backside years later. Of course this doesn't bother bonus driven managers. They will be long gone when the time comes to pay the piper for years of sub standard "cheap" maintenance.
And furthermore people much smarter than you are looking at
re-industrialisation - pulling work out of China and Asia This will be the natural effect when the Chinese allow the Yuan to float to its true market value.
To put it another way; Asian maintenance costs
will only get more expensive with time. But of course a bonus driven manager with a Five year time horizon doesn't care.