offshore maintenance comes back to Brissy

[heads_down]

Qantas brings home A330 maintenance

May 11, 2009 - 11:17AM
Maintenance of Qantas' A330 fleet will return to Australian shores, the carrier says.
The Brisbane heavy-maintenance facility, which employs more than 500 people, will take over work that was previously done offshore.
Qantas chief executive officer Alan Joyce said the company had reached agreement with the Brisbane employees about the future of the A330 work.
"The flexible arrangements we have come to, as well as the growing scale of aircraft type in the Qantas fleet, mean that we can now establish A330 heavy maintenance operations in Australia that will be globally competitive and of the highest quality," Mr Joyce said on Monday.
The outcome would provide steady work for the facility, which currently carries out maintenance of the Boeing 767 fleet, he said.
Qantas Engineering in Brisbane is expected to begin conducting A330 heavy maintenance checks in early 2010.
The Qantas Group has 22 A330 aircraft and it expects to take delivery of another two of the planes in the next 12 months.
Qantas says between 80 and 90 per cent of Qantas aircraft heavy maintenance is carried out in Australia, and the work that is carried out offshore is mainly overflow work.
AAP

[Going Boeing]

So has QF BNE HM got the contract to maintain the RAAF A330 MRTT fleet? My understanding was that Qantas would carry out the QF Group A330 maintenance in BNE if they also got the RAAF work.

[Bootstrap1]

Good on Alan Joyce. It seems this bloke has half a brain and a bit of foresight. This is fantastic news for QF Engineering.

Now if he can change the engineering management from the pack of narrow minded imbeciles they seem to be, to some people who want to rebuild E & M to its former glory then they will well and truly be on there way to being a world renowned airline again.

[Ngineer]

Now if he can change the engineering management from the pack of narrow minded imbeciles they seem to be,

Keep on dreamin.

[ampclamp]

:D Well done AJ :ok:
Great news for QE and especially the BNE folks.

[Short_Circuit]

Great news for BNE HM and AUS Engineering as a whole, but, was it QF decision or did the Government apply the thumb screws to have A330 facility in AUS to maintain the RAAF A330 tankers.
I am sure the Gov would not want to rely on Asia for maintenance on our military A/C, seeing that is where our biggest threat is. :eek:

[Ngineer]

I would say that the Aussie exchange rate over the last 18months has probably played some part also.

[teresa green]

A great result for the engineers, pehaps, just perhaps, it is the start of the company turnaround and bring it back to straight and level, a good start in the right direction, australian A/C serviced by australian engineers, as they should be, keep going AJ you just might have something there.:D

[BrissySparkyCoit]

As an employee in Brisbane, I must say it is good news for us. Good to see this happen under Joyce and not Dixon.

How are things in Sydney. I heard the workshops are being decimated? Engine line to be scaled back to a repair facility rather than overhaul?

How secure are other parts of engineering?
It will be very interesting to see if there is any change in morale in Brisbane with this announcement.

[ampclamp]

In syd things are different depending on work location.International is slower without the OS operators and they'll be looking at relocating some staff to base and domestic.They are still quite busy I hear.Dom will slow a bit more but may get jetconnect 737 contract so extra A chks there if so.
Moving to smaller a/c to maintain regularity of flts.
Base is always busy so unless the wheels completely fall off in the economy there are jobs in SYD as far as this pleb can tell.
I'm fairly sure any over staffing at the ITB will be quickly vacuumed up by base, dom and "team 380".
If any cns guy/gals want to move Brissy and syd would welcome you I'm sure, just may not work where you would wish.

[Ngineer]

Although very welcome news I think bootstrap summed it up well. AJ would only make such a decision if it made financial sense, not for the benefit of QF engineers. He has stated in the past that QF engineering was too expensive for the Jetstar model. If he were concerned about QF engineering as a whole, there are many significant issues within engineering that have not even begun to be addressed and probably never will. (Management, disengagement, morale, customers, training for AME's are examples of these).

I think that ultimately he is probably trying to achieve similar objectives as GD, albeit from an entirely different angle as they have realised that GD's very aggressive approach did not work.

The damage caused by outsourcing maint has no doubt also created problems for our brand image. (Something we tried to tell them from the start when they shutdown Sydney heavy maint.....:ugh:)