Originally Posted by
knobbycobby
Great Posts Rated D.
Agree with Keg also.
There is a massive global pilot shortage. It's all due to a mass of retirements.
Qantas and global airlines that have created a multitude of subsidiaries have created tranches of lower paid jobs and job insecurity.
Pilots are by nature conservative so scare tactics work on them brilliantly. Standard line of sign xxx at airline xxx or company xxx will take Your flying.
But here is the rub. You can get paid far more and have a far more stable home life by going into other careers now. Airline work has got harder, less flexible and more intense. Other jobs have gone the opposite way and younger people don't see flying as an attractive option.
The Networks, Jetconnects, QLinks, etc etc just don't provide the incentives to get people to spent $200,000 plus on their training. This was not the case when the baby boomers joined. Pilots then were well paid in comparison, rostering was decent, and it was a respected position. You could choose between Qantas,Ansett or Australian/TAA. But this massive surge of baby boomers will all hit retirement age very shortly.
As Keg alluded to Jetconnect/Qlink can't crew flights. The operation is in complete chaos. You can only treat people like s$&@ for so long. Loyalty is gone.
The Trojan horse is weakening.
But Threatening a pilot with fear has worked, so Qantas will wheel it out regardless as it's always worked in the past. SH EA due?
IMHO they risk so much if they pull that tactic. The SH pilots are already worked to the bone. CEO is paid $25 million plus, Andrew David 8.18 million. Turnaround transformation. Game changing. Exec pay up by a multiple of 25 times.
But please mr/mrs SH pilot. Work 92 hours a month over Christmas for us to fill in for cancelled flying whilst we simultaneously threaten you at EA time with Jetconnect.
It's like the boy who cried wolf. Globally companies have tried this over and over as pay and conditions have reduced.
But trust has reduced too, along with goodwill. Like fuel it can run out with dire consequences.
Eventually crews will have enough and not care about "helping out" whilst simultaneously being threatened and losing precious time from their loved ones.
To pull that with Christmas and holidays approaching reminds me of the top gun quote, "Gutsiest move I ever saw MAV".
Don't worry knobby, the SH "system" is sooo far beyond "helping out", that ship sailed quite some time ago.
Fatigue is at epidemic levels, and every pilot understands that there is no relief in sight. I can only speak for SH, but we are witnessing an uncontained failure of the system. Pilots are pulling the pin mid duty due fatigue (with complete justification), reserve callouts are being crewed, but then as a consequence the following duties are then in the fatigue zone and going uncrewed, with up to 100 cancellations in a week for SH just due to lack of crew.
By their own documentation they run a "
Reactive Fatigue Management system" (stop and think about what those words actually mean) FRMS. That is it, that
IS the fatigue plan. Rostering under the 48 exemption
only considering the numerical values. The entire clause that says "the Operator Shall not roster fatiguing duties" has been excised from the system. Every possible work day is rostered, you are required actively opt out. Silence is compliance.
Rosters are coming out at 77+ hours stick per bid period 28 days consisting of mixing up 0500 starts 4 leg/ 11:00+ planned days with 2, 3 or 4 aircraft, followed the next day by a DPS finishing at 0030 (0130 by the time you actually make it to bed). Then a BOC sector home, to back up the next day for 4 legs finishing at 2130+. Two "days off" (56 hours) and an 0500 start 11:00+ for 4 legs, wash, lather rinse and repeat. Try doing that for a couple of months. That is before we even start to talk about reserve callouts.
Training Captains are starting to hit annual 950 stick limits and can't be paired with trainee's.
Management are the deer in the headlights now, paralysed. They simply cannot comprehend a genuine solution. The multiple base strategy (hello Ansett anyone?) may have saved a few bucks on hotels over the years, but as a consequence, they now have a complete rostering disaster on their hands. The only possible solution left is multi-day trips with 3 legs per day for every base wherever they can.
Hotel costs will go through the roof, but the optimisation for for minimising that cost only worked in one scenario (short term) and has led to a brittleness of the system once flying ramped up. They have all their crew in all the wrong spots.
There is nobody else to blame, and they know it. So no, SH won't be helping out this Christmas, or next or the one after that. At the rate things are going, there will be severe fatigue consequences for the system as it starts to actually cause long term health issues. Self confessed "1000 hour men" have discovered their constitutions and health aren't quite as resilient as they thought after a couple of years.
Every genuine attempt to substantially improve rostering over the years has been stonewalled. They could crew the system with less fatigue, but the multiple base strategy mean is will cost big money to do it. This is a consequence of business decisions that have been made in the past, SH as a cash cow to be milked rapaciously. Crisis is an often an overused cliche, but that label can now be firmly affixed to SH.
The Qantas Source documents the daily cancellations.