Provided they get rid of all the service elements that support the older aircraft - smaller maintenance team, smaller tech team, smaller everything i.e they need to "get rid" of vast numbers of people working in the "old way".
That costs them redundancy money so I guess it's not absolutely as beneficial but in the long run that's where they will head. Numbers will be wound down and many positions will go the way of manual telephone exchange operators - tens of people replaced with just one and an automated system.
Or so the spin goes. I wonder why these new advanced aircraft such as the A380, so advanced it almost fixes itself, for some reason has quite a few more engineers attending this aircraft when it rolls into the gate? whereas the old, maintenance intensive 767s and 747s don't ?
The redundancies we have seen in the engineering side of things is more to do with removing the legacy of the TN era, MOC/Heavy Maintenance and consolidating it in one place, Sydney.
The only advancement is the shared liability of the newly built airliners being outsourced to many different manufactures, having the balls to delay the periodic inspections, A checks, C checks etc, to levels which make the current era of jets seem maintenance intensive. How successful that will be remains to be seen - and I think most will believe it when they see it.
At least the A380 has provided plenty of jobs for the guys who would've been made redundant in Sydney when they closed down that engine shop a few years ago. You gotta thank airbus for that at least.