Good news for AO cabin crew in cairns

[Trollywally]

lets continue this thread with the correct name. :ok:

[GalleyHag]

Its been very quite on the AO cabin crew front. What is the latest info. Have crew been advised of which bases they got as yet Sydney, Melbourne or Perth?

[raft rower]

No news on the northern front as yet, EOI's don't close until the 15th and we should know by the 22nd!:D

[GalleyHag]

Great, good luck and I hope everyone gets the base they are after.

[RaverFlaver]

Not wanting to detract from the title of the thread, though I wouldn't be surprised if the QF CNS SH base isn't around in two years time.

There are a couple of things that don't make sense.

The fact that Qantas has been replacing domestic services with Jetstar quite significantly and is now opening up a Jetstar Intl base, hints that they want to continue expansion of Jetstar out of CNS.

With QF these days trying to keep costs down and grow Jetstar, the creation of a CNS base doesn't seem in line with that, given they never had a CNS base prior, what makes it so viable now when Jetstar have so many services in and out of CNS and plan for more?

Further, CNS being classified as a leisure destination makes me think CNS will end up similar to the Gold Coast with (correct me if I'm wrong) only one QF flight a day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm more than pleased with the outcome for us AO crew though I think it may have been a quick fix solution due to various circumstances - i.e Jetstar Intl starting, the pilots eba and having 300 odd crew with heavily reduced flying as of September.

In saying that if they do decide to close the base in the future, it may well help out a lot of crew that did want to head back down south who missed out this time round, and for those on the transfer lists as well.

All good.

What do others think of this?

Raverflaver :)

[QF skywalker]

Raver,

Some good points you make, but I really do believe that a CNS base is here to stay, here are some of my own thoughts.

1. The creation of a Cairns base will help create more 'day return' flying for short haul crew. Thus meaning less crew to overnight in CNS from SEP 07 onwards. This can only help drive costs down.

2. As we are already QF trained. It is far cheaper to do an 8day conversion course for 300 crew on year 1 S/H pay, rather than recruit off the street which would take longer to train and be more costly.

3. Qantas are going to need to mass recruit in the next 12 months. We already know 3000 tech crew to be hired over the next 3 years-including the establishment of Qantas' own pilot training school ( that's how serious they are ). With this in mind, many more cabin crew will be needed to crew the A380, 787 and also the leased A330-200's and additional 737-800's arriving for QF from DEC 07.

4. Plenty of direct flying ex CNS to maintain a base. BNE/SYD/MEL/DRW/AYQ/NRT/PER and from what I hear CNS-SIN is soon to be re-instated. That is plenty of flying for 200 odd cabin crew.

I hope all AO crew got their first preference - time to start studying new aircraft and prepare for September.

Safe flying
QF SKY

[RaverFlaver]

Likewise QFskywalker.

I understand about the need for future crew. My thinking was more along the lines of why create a base, just send us to already established bases.

However, you point out the reduction of overnighting crews with the creation of the CNS base, so yeah, that is something that I hadn't factored in. Good point.

Raverflaver :)