Qantas will make some of its pilots redundant for the first time more than 40 years as part of a broader plan to cut 5000 jobs as the ailing carrier looks to return to profitability.
The airline on Tuesday asked captains and first officers of its ageing 767 and 747 aircraft for voluntary redundancy applications.
Qantas is understood to be seeking less than 100 redundancies among the 550 767 and 747 pilots in its workforce. Overall, the airline has around 2000 pilots in its mainline operations.
All of its 767s will exit the fleet by the first quarter of 2015 and the airline will retire six of its remaining 15 747s by the first half of 2016.
Qantas has long had an excess of pilots but it has dealt with it by offering leave without pay which allowed them to work for other airlines, including Jetstar.
But in an internal memo on Tuesday, Chief Pilot Dick Tobiano told pilots that plans to accelerate the retirement of 767s and 747s combined with the end of a number of leave without pay periods had left the airline with a pilot surplus it would be unable to manage.
Australian and International Pilots Association president Nathan Safe said Qantas had never offered voluntary redundancies for pilots in its 93 year history and the only instance of compulsory redundancies was more than 40 years ago.
There is no proscribed redundancy package in the union agreement, so Mr Safe said he would be negotiating with the company about the offer.