Why Cobham specifically?
ICAO details the data but subsidiary and contractor flying has gone from around 4% cicra 2000 to 40% of an airline's flights today. Very common in the USA down under it is a few years behind.
So how it works is that a contractor/subsidiary will be quietly whispered about prior to the introduction of a new type or contract negotiation. If has been this way in an adversarial or at best accommodated IR models environment with notable
but few exceptions.
- The intent being to spook pilots introducing a staking horse. Former Qantas CFO Gregg detailed a lot of it in a parliamentary hearing in Canberra.
- Timed with a downturn in the business cycle allows IR to drive through cost savings
Cobham is likely to be the airline Qantas uses this time around and of course JQ went from the original 23 aircraft to be bigger than the parent. The problem for Qantas and IR is that if pilots actually do some homework and realise the supply shortage is real, then the game is up.
IR will be betting heavily that the ghosts of 1989 are still in the cockpits of aircraft, where fear of redundancy, rather than a pilot workforce cognisant of their importance in the company and the relative scarcity of their skill set to face off against.
The model of adversarial IR is broken, demographically, my suspicion is that O'Leary knows it.