I just hope everyone pulls their weight and gets through this quickly and cleanly.
Qantas long haul terms and conditions are gone. Guys are living in la la land if they think it's sustainable. If you want to continue earning north of 300k, go overseas. They've got to pay that rate as not many locals have the skills, and no expat would go unless there was something lucrative in it for them. It's not just the pilots though. The bloated salaries go right through the company from flight ops to ramp, engineering to management. I mean Qantas have a whole floor of people devoted to load sheets. Jetstar have an iPad app and the pilots do it on a 25 min turn. Qantas is still run internally like a government department. It's heavily unionised and resistant to change.
The market rate in Australia will settle somewhere between Jetstar and virgin. For everybody, not just pilots.
I see Qantas international as we know it gone very soon. Jetstar flying to leisure destinations internationally with a token 787 fleet and Qantas pilots operating 330s and 737s domestically under the short haul agreement.
The 380s will be flipped to Emirates or purely fly the pacific under a restructured eba closer to the pilot award.