Brace yourself.....
Well, I don't work for JHAS either but I do side with marlin on this. The thing is, the owners of JHAS have invested a lot of money to employ 350 odd aircraft maintenance people for the last four years when it would have probably now been turned into some warehouse or storage facility. They gave it a go for no other reason but to try and make it work, so maybe it isn't, maybe it is. What I can say is that while this industry is struggling all around, airlines just won't pay a premium for maintenance at the expense of the competitive market they operate in. It's a trend unfortunately that won't be reversed.
What I can guess about that customer list for what it's worth...as marlin pointed out, the staff at JHAS are paid competitive wages, which means that operators that don't want to pay $140+ an hour for heavy maintenance choose to go to places where it's cheaper. All of those customers are not paying more than JHAS, so I suspect their decisions are price sensitive. Hasn't Virgin always had heavy checks sent to NZ, even from back as far as 2002? Now they are alliance partners I guess you would only expect it to grow. JQ started sending checks to ST years ago, Tiger as well. Line is probably gone to AMSA because they are all in the same family. Skytraders......who, oh yeah I'm sure they're upset about that. Skywest get all their other heavy checks done in singers, so why stop paying $30 an hour and send it to JHAS? I heard JHAS have about 30 line customers, that's probably where the business does well and then has to prop up the rest. Low volume, highly skilled activities over short periods of time is where the industry can continue to focus on in Australia. After all, the international airlines are frowing here all the time, and while QF isnt interested someone has to fill the gap, and I sure dont want it to be the singaporean scab outfit....more about them later. We, as a group should be defending our last frontier of professionism in Line Maintenenace as clearly, the days of 80-100 thousand man hour checks at high rates are gone. For an airline it's tough doing it yourself while your competitors don't, let alone a third party that pays the same rates and has to make a profit. Sorry folks, it doesn't work.
Romulus said smarter not harder. Agree totally, this thread was about the retention of migrant skills at the expense of local workers. Unfortunately you can't discriminate like that. They are individuals with families that came here in a system that allowed them to, it's not JHAS's issue. Did JHAS do it deliberately or did they do what the customer asked with tight deadlines to bring in a first of type aircraft. Marlin said they have trained, so whats the issue? I'm sure that customer could have given that work to the same line maintenance provider as the B777s, oh yeah that's a Singaporean company that allegedly flaunt the visa laws to conduct transits on their own fleet and while the poor guy is here on a few bucks a day, just do a couple of transits on these other customers while your here. Then fly him back before anyone finds out. Now that is the crap we should be focussing on. The positive thing is that customer gave the work to JHAS, how many of our fellow brothers are 457s, I bet the ratio is more locals now, maybe not so when they started. Yep, if our CASA slugs had woken up years ago our industry would have been better prepared.
I say JHAS is exactly what we need, you say close it down. Well if it does go, we may start sitting up thinking maybe we should have backed it. It sounds as though the ALAEA may not be getting dues from a handful of 457 guys at JHAS. Theres probably a lot of guys there that do and always have and maybe a few that would be mystified their dues go to a guy that wished it would close. Figure that one out? Maybe I was mistaken and that's not what I read.....can't be bothered looking for it now.