G'day Sandy. Yeah. Had heard that but only on grape vine. Nothing more formal than that but it seems to dovetail with the rumoured plan for the aeroplanes from Dec last year.
Next 20ish 787 commands and F/O slots (and I presume 40ish S/O slots) to go to BNE. I think these will be the ones alluded to in the NTFS as potentially coming this training year depending on when the aeroplanes are slated to arrive in the second half of calendar year 2018. SYD base with similar numbers for aeroplanes 7 and 8 with similar numbers likely in FY 18/19.
If the order for more jets firms up then probably additional training slots in 18/19 depending on when they're slated for delivery after 1 Jul '19.
I recall a rumour from 12 or so months ago that our delivery slots for FY19/20 were for something like 11 aeroplanes. Of course QF may not take all of them (if the rumour is even true) but if they do it'll make the training load of this year and next look like child's play.
How QF deal with the S/O slots will be interesting given that PER and MEL S/Os should get first go at bidding for the transfer to BNE, etc. I wonder if we'll see a time when junior pilots are recruited to SYD 787 whilst more senior crew in PER can't bid back to SYD. I hope it doesn't come to that.