If QF are forced to bite the bullet and shutdown long haul ops, don’t expect it to start up again with the same group of Pilots, engineers and baggage handlers.
This is a great strategy from the smartest guys in the room. NP should be in QF management, if he isn't already. But I can think of a couple of hurdles for the smartest guys in the room.
There's that pesky FWA, and the fact that the 3 unions are taking PIA...the P standing for protected. They would have to completely shut down longhaul, and some of shorthaul. Sort of a reverse 1989.
So I guess they would have to make the best part of 5000 staff redundant. So at approx 100k each for redundancy pay, thats 500mil. But what's another 500mil when you've just splashed over 1Bil on some fancy new A320's.
Then they would have to refund a full years worth of pre sold tickets to customers. I'd hate to think how much that would be.
Then they would have the whole long haul fleet sitting up against the fence for how long? I suppose they could repaint them silver, but they've made redundant all the pilots that could fly the 767's, 747's, A380's.
They could start a new airline and hope that the redundant pilots would be desperate to come back under lower t&c. They couldn't call it Qantas, because they have shut that down. I've thought of a great new name for this new airline...NP Troll Airlines.