Merged: QANTASLINK Crewing Crisis!

[xxgoldxx]

HSC

As a ATPL in the 4-5000 hr bracket and plenty of Multi crew turbine etc etc at 35 yo and all my working life in and around aircraft I do understand how flyitboy may feel..
as I only did Yr 11 then went onto a 4 year A/C trade apprenticeship before deciding to go the pointy end years later I now can not apply for anything that involves the red rat or Skywest and a few others as well...

presonally if I wanted to fly a Dash I hear SAPL pays better anyway and there is other options...
I could always go back and do year 12...but on second thoughts !!

[32megapixels]

Direct Entry Captains.....on the table, probably will have to look at it seriously in about 4 months when a significant amount of current capts walk.

The lack of F/O's will get a Capt spot in accordance with the seniority list, however if Direct Entry Captains are put in place it will be a lose/lose position as this will really annoy the F/O's next on the list.... and no F/O's left, oh, I forgot the 150 hour F/O's. Also I believe the Cadets cannot move to the left seat?

It has been considered. Not sure the current position on this.

[Capt Wally]

I tend to agree with some in here saying that the HSC shouldn't be a prerequisite. Afterall the more mature guys floating around these days without HSC have had/got oodles of experience flying the same gen public around as those that have HSC, being able to spell doesn't help you when the spam hits the fan! Having to go back to learn the req HSC subjects to get into say QL wouldn't make a scrap of difference to the end result anyway I feel, that being to fly! Besides not all employers req it, so where's the reason behind it?
Had a chuckle at that one 'bulla', the bigger the plane, the bigger the instruction book ! I don't think 'flyitboy' was saying that to offend anybody probably more like the fact that why need HSC to fly anything, never lone a twin turbo prop at slow speeds which is what QL have to play with.
Anyway I guess if someone wanted to join those that required the outdated bits of paper they would do simply as others have said here, go do a bridging course, just to please the rule makers.

"XXGOLDXX"...know exactly where yr comin' from, same here! Not having HSC hasn't stopped me from flying fast jets.

CW

[Jenna Talia]

I don't think so

Icarus53,

despite the fact that basic maths, physics and english are used constantly in this profession

I agree we use basic maths and english, in the form of general everyday additions, multiplying & dividing, plus having to communicate in correct English terminology, which is Primary School level stuff anyway. Not that I am suggesting that only Primary School level education should be a minimum requirement.

Physics? I don't think so, let alone any of those mentioned three subjects at HSC level are totally useless in today's environment.

In fact, I think that QF have dropped the Physics requirement (stand to be corrected if wrong).

JT

[lemel]

correct, qf have dropped physics (for direct entry, not sure about cadets).

i was reading an old australian aviation article about qf (1996). it was talking about the "new" computer testing that will nock most people back when applying, etc. it then goes on to specifically say that english, maths & physics at HSC level are only used to cull back the numbers as giving everyone a psych test would be to costly for the airline.

[vigi-one]

Well its happened. QLink have had to charter Alliance F100's to cover routes where no crew/aircraft available. The QANTAS Board should have these guys balls. Sorry bit hard when they've got none.

wakey wakey hands off Snakey

[teggun]

On what routes will they be operating and when? If so it will only make the move out of the place even faster.

I simply cannot understand why they try all these things, when all they need to do is to provide career progression into mainline rather than Virgin!

[cap71n]

Just a quick question - what exactly DOES QL require for command? TT and time on type? (Sorry for the drift).

[Hugh Jarse]

Just a quick question - what exactly DOES QL require for command? TT and time on type? (Sorry for the drift).

These are the current requirements:

1. You must meet all regulatory requirements;

2. 2000hrs aeronautical experience;

3. 700hrs experience as an FO on company aircraft;

4. A minimum of 1 year company experience.

** The Mgr Flt Ops or his delegate may vary 2,3 and 4.

ATPL aeronautical experience requirements may be completed during promotion training.

Hope this helps.

[Hugh Jarse]

Pilot Shortage Grounds Qantas

By Steve Creedy, Aviation writer | February 27, 2008

QANTASLINK has become the latest regional carrier to suspend services because of a shortage of pilots.
The Qantas Group subsidiary announced yesterday that it was making schedule changes on Queensland and NSW routes because of a pilot attrition rate higher than the normal level of about 10 to 15 per cent.
The QantasLink woes come after competitor Regional Express earlier this month warned of a "bloodbath" among the smaller airlines as they struggle to hire and retain pilots.
Rex, also forced to suspend some services and cancel others, said it faced an annual attrition rate of 60 per cent for its pilot workforce. The shortages affecting the regional carriers are part of a worldwide trend that has seen competition for pilots among airlines increasing as the industry experiences strong growth, particularly in the Middle East and Asia.
The growth of Australia's domestic aviation market - fuelled by the mining boom - has also been a factor.
QantasLink said it would suspend some services, reinstate others and upgrade to bigger aircraft on some routes.
Qantas Group general manager regional airlines Narendra Kumar said he expected the schedule changes to remain until at least July. "QantasLink has a number of measures in place to restore pilot numbers over the next few months, including a comprehensive pilot training program," he said.
"We have received over 500 applications for a new QantasLink pilot trainee program and the first graduates ... are expected to start flying for QantasLink by the end of June."
The shortage has forced the Qantas subsidiary to suspend six Sydney-Newcastle services a week, meaning the regional carrier has now dropped services from the NSW regional city to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

[excellr8]

and another pilot shortage article

From Today's SMH




Growing pilot shortage brings Qantas regional services down to earth

THE nationwide pilot shortage has forced QantasLink to announce the sudden cancellation of some of its regional services, fuelling fears the crisis could soon hit the larger domestic carriers.
Days after the Qantas chief executive, Geoff Dixon, warned that the lack of available pilots had hit its regional subsidiary, QantasLink yesterday announced its "higher than normal pilot attrition rate" would result in the suspension of some services on its NSW and Queensland routes.
QantasLink's chief executive, Narendra Kumar, said the airline would suspend its six weekly services between Sydney and Newcastle and make changes to flights on its Armidale, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Moree and Narrabri routes. The airline also announced the suspension of services between Brisbane and Mackay and a scaling back of its services to Hervey Bay.
The suspension of QantasLink flights follows the desperate measures already taken by some of its smaller competitors, such as Regional Express, which have been forced to cancel some of their routes since last year. Rex has already been forced to look for pilots as far afield as Ukraine and has warned that Australia will need a further 1800 airline pilots by late next year to keep up with the growth of the airline industry.
The crisis has largely been blamed on pilots being poached from regional airlines - where the pay is relatively low - with attractive packages from larger carriers. But Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Blue have all downplayed the risks of a crisis, arguing their increased involvement in pilot training schemes would ensure there will be a big enough pool of trained pilots to draw from in future.
However, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots has warned the airlines are losing experience in the cockpit. "We don't believe that there will be enough experience levels to take up what they are losing on the other side," warned the union's Lawrie Cox.
Virgin Blue, Qantas, Tiger and Jetstar have drawn heavily on the nation's regional pilot base to fill their ranks.

[lc_461]

Being replaced by Jetstar??

QantasLink Schedule Changes

Latest News

Sydney, 26 February 2008
QantasLink today announced further schedule changes on its Queensland and New South Wales routes due to the higher than normal pilot attrition rate.
Qantas Group General Manager Regional Airlines Narendra Kumar said the schedule changes would include:
* a suspension of some services on a limited number of routes;
* the reinstatement of a number of previously suspended services in some instances; and
* an upgrade to larger aircraft on some services to maintain capacity.
Mr Kumar said QantasLink expected the schedule changes to be in place until at least July 2008.
"QantasLink has a number of measures in place to restore pilot numbers over the next few months, including a comprehensive pilot training program. We have received over 500 applications for a new QantasLink Pilot Trainee Program and the first graduates from this program are expected to start flying for QantasLink by the end of June," he said.
New South Wales
* QantasLink will suspend its six Newcastle-Sydney services per week. This follows the suspension of Newcastle-Brisbane and Newcastle- Melbourne services that occurred in February. The Qantas Group continues to offer twice-daily Newcastle-Melbourne and three daily Newcastle-Brisbane services operated by Jetstar on 177-seat A320 aircraft.
* QantasLink will upgrade to larger aircraft on some services to Armidale, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie and Moree/Narrabri.
Queensland
* Two of QantasLink's 24 Hervey Bay-Brisbane return services will be temporarily suspended.
* A daily QantasLink Brisbane-Mackay service will be temporarily suspended. The Qantas Group will continue to operate four daily services on the route - three Jetstar A320 177-seat services and one QantasLink Q400 72-seat service, offering overnight services between the two destinations.
* Adjustments to the Brisbane-Rockhampton schedule will see the reinstatement of the
Q400 72-seat non-stop overnight service on the route from 4 March.
* The daily Gladstone to Brisbane direct service will be rescheduled to its previous early morning departure time of 6:45am from 4 March.
Mr Kumar said all QantasLink customers holding confirmed tickets on any suspended services would be transferred to the next available QantasLink or Jetstar flight at no extra charge, or offered a full refund.

Interesting times ahead.. Note that Jetstar is replacing some QFlink routes!

[32megapixels]

How bout they come out and state that because of their mis-management over the past few years have caused this.

Short term goals for a quick personal bonus has caused this problem.

When you talk to anyone outside of the industry about the cost of buying your endorsement - or job, they are dumbfounded that it has happened.

Remember, loyalty went out the door when this happened.

Poor management should not go unpunished.....but it will!!!

Oh the pilot shortage, oh the poaching....government please help us!!!

Unbelievable!

[ditzyboy]

Note that Jetstar is replacing some QFlink routes!

I do not see any evidence of JQ increasing their services to replace QFLink in the press release. As far as I can tell they are existing services. Correct me if I am wrong...

On replacing QFLink, CFS stands out to me as a market that could justify less QFLink frequency (2-3 services per day) and the addition of Jetstar. GLT and ROK ex-BNE too?

[Icarus53]

JQ are flying MEL-NTL to replace QL services. This is a result of MEL crew being temporarily transfered to CNS to fill slots for crew training on Q400.

[news]

Love the term used by management "poaching". Shows their egocentric position of how they read the fallout around them. Or is it simply the best rubbish they can push through the media.

[Going Boeing]

Steve Creedy still regurgitating management spin - when will he do some research?

Regionals suffer in pilot shortage

Steve Creedy | February 29, 2008
THE pilot shortage has raised fears about the loss of valuable experience from the cockpits of the nation's regional airlines.

QantasLink this week became the latest regional carrier to announce route cuts, saying it would suspend flights in NSW and Queensland because of higher than normal pilot attrition.

But Regional Express, which says it has been experiencing an annualised attrition rate of 60 per cent, has also been forced to announce service suspensions and cancellations.

Both airlines have instituted programs to train replacement pilots but there are worries that these are less experienced than the older hands they replace.

Virgin Blue chief executive Brett Godfrey has raised the issue with the federal Government at the departmental and ministerial levels and union officials have also voiced concerns.

Mr Godfrey said at last week's half-yearly Virgin results that the pool of pilots with qualifications well in excess of minimum requirements had dropped as a result of the skills shortage.

He said a pilot shortage meant rural pilots and those on regional aircraft were coming through flying schools and progressing more quickly than ever before.

"I'm not saying it's unsafe," he said. "I'm just saying we are at a point where we don't want to end up pushing them too quickly."

Australian Federation of Air Pilots senior industrial officer Lawrie Cox said the "quick turnaround endorsements" being offered by regional airlines would not get them the experience they needed. He said experienced captains were walking away from regional carriers because they had had enough of poor pay and deteriorating conditions.

"Potentially you've got a short-term employee who has got very minimal hours being given a command on an aircraft type ... and then a brand new employee sitting beside him in the right-hand seat," Mr Cox said.

"That's a recipe for disaster in our view and that's the sort of consequence we've got concerns about because they're the people who are going to end up in trouble."

Australia's concerns echo international fears of a skills shortfall as the industry continues to grow. The International Air Transport Association's director of operations, Juergen Haacker, said recently that some airlines were offering captain's positions based on entry levels that were less than half what was normally considered the accepted minimum flight time.

Mr Haacker told Orient Aviation magazine that the IATA was monitoring air safety incidents that appeared to have occurred because of inexperience on the flight deck. "We are carefully monitoring what is going on ... it is a trend we are certainly seeing and, especially in combination with an inexperienced co-pilot on the same plane, it is definitely not a trend we would like to see," Mr Haacker said.

Mr Cox said the airlines would have to decide how they were going to attract and retain pilots on decent packages to keep experience levels high enough.

If they did not do this, he would expect the Transport Department and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to become concerned at the risk levels.

"The risk profile is obviously climbing dramatically," he said.

The union official said the problem had been around for some time but the airlines had been compensating by trimming routes.

He said more experienced pilots in the past had made a lifestyle decision to stay with regional carriers. But he said the regionals were changing their work practices so that they were more like the bigger airlines.

"That's why pilots are walking out of the door of the regionals," Mr Cox said. "They're not being poached, they're just saying they're going to make a career decision because their lifestyle has changed."

Executives from the bigger airlines said last week they had yet to be hurt by the shortage, despite moves by overseas airlines to recruit in Australia.

Mr Godfrey said Virgin, which lost about seven pilots but took on 140 in the first half, was not affected. He said Virgin's minimum requirement for Boeing 737 pilots was 2000 hours - 500 hours higher than the minimum required by CASA, and it had 400 pilot applications on its books.

Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon acknowledged that QantasLink had an issue with pilots but said it was confined to the regional carrier.

"Qantas, contrary to a lot of the publicity at the moment, has an attrition rate right at this moment for pilots of just on or maybe a little bit below 3 per cent," Mr Dixon said.

"That is a very, very low attrition rate," Mr Dixon added. "We do have a specific issue with QantasLink which is being worked through with some strategies that (Qantas executive general manager) John Borghetti and Narendra Kumar, who runs QantasLink, have devised."

Mr Dixon said the airline's new pilot training school, which started last month, would end up training about 3000 pilots for Qantas, and for other airlines on top of that, over the next five to 10 years.

CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said pilot training was based on demonstrated competency and airline pilots were subjected to regular checks and training.

Mr Gibson said an airline pilot was required to have a total of 1500 hours, with 250 as pilot-in-command, and undertake 21.5 hours of theory exams with a pass mark of 70 per cent.

"The bar's set pretty high and there's certainly no question of reducing the level of that bar," he said. "And of course, the higher up you go in your licence category, the more regular your proficiency checks.

"So although people might be saying new airline pilots coming through may have less hours than they did five or 10 years ago, their level of ability is what we're testing and remains at the same high standard."

[Boston]

How many pilots does (should) REX have? I am just curious to what the 60% Attrition rate actually means.

[neville_nobody]

Interesting that none of the articles mention paying for endorsements or very low wages for shiftwork. Why don't any of the papers actually do some research and look in the reasons why the entry standards of regional airlines have decreased by more than half in less than 5 years? Information would not be hard to come by.

[arcs'n'sparcs]

Just as an aside, LAMEs are also starting to leave QL. Industry wages have risen to the extent that shift-work 24/7 wages are being matched by GA Monday-Friday. For the next 2 months there will be a chronic shortage of avionics LAMEs: in fact, only 1 on shift at any one time, just like 10 years ago. And that's without anyone trying to take leave or calling in sick. Fortunately there are never any avionics defects on our a/c or we'd really be in trouble! Oh, that's right, plenty of spares parked against the fence.