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The issue is not the cadets themselves,
It is the blood sucking, low breed, unscrupulous execs that have identified these cadet programs as a tool to save money based on training costs and charging for training.
And guess what, in a few years they will identify cost savings within the program until eventually the cadet will graduate with a handshake, a wink and a bill and sent off to pole around 200+ unsuspecting victims while these fat cats walk with their big bonus.
This is the problem.
Metroshmuker,
Jetstar itself is not the issue, domestically it was a stroke of genius to a certain degree, until it canabilised the groups premium market.
The problem is the Jetsaring of a business that dosen't fit that type of business model.
It is the blood sucking, low breed, unscrupulous execs that have identified these cadet programs as a tool to save money based on training costs and charging for training.
And guess what, in a few years they will identify cost savings within the program until eventually the cadet will graduate with a handshake, a wink and a bill and sent off to pole around 200+ unsuspecting victims while these fat cats walk with their big bonus.
This is the problem.
Metroshmuker,
Jetstar itself is not the issue, domestically it was a stroke of genius to a certain degree, until it canabilised the groups premium market.
The problem is the Jetsaring of a business that dosen't fit that type of business model.
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Qan,
I don't doubt the figures you are quoting are those within the report.
However, can you tell me where Geoff Dixons $10mill payout figure is disclosed? It should be there in the exec remuneration figures should it not?
He was an Exec after all and it was an Exec payout.
Maybe it is just me who is missing it??
I don't doubt the figures you are quoting are those within the report.
However, can you tell me where Geoff Dixons $10mill payout figure is disclosed? It should be there in the exec remuneration figures should it not?
He was an Exec after all and it was an Exec payout.
Maybe it is just me who is missing it??
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Its on again!!!
edit: Look I didn't quite get it all but it seems the senators wanted to get on the record (after a discussion with CASA 'in camera' I would imagine) that the Jetstar Cadet programme hasn't been run in accordance with the CASA approval and there may be some suggestion of foul play somewhere.
CASA are looking into how the changes came about!!!
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The Kelpie
edit: Look I didn't quite get it all but it seems the senators wanted to get on the record (after a discussion with CASA 'in camera' I would imagine) that the Jetstar Cadet programme hasn't been run in accordance with the CASA approval and there may be some suggestion of foul play somewhere.
CASA are looking into how the changes came about!!!
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The Kelpie
Last edited by The Kelpie; 18th Mar 2011 at 05:08.
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Plenty infact thousands of experienced airline, military, regional and ga pilots out there and we need cadets? Right ok...
I guess that will be the end of GA. Good luck to the piston operators out there. If you can't make it in to any of the cadetships it means you will never fly for an airline and thus have the potential to make a reasonable wage. So who in their right mind would fork out 80k to go and fly a death trap in the bush?
Have a mate thats a captain on a Q400 and he has an interesting/insightful point of view on the matter of his copilot 200 hr cadets.
I love the gloss of it all. If we all pat each other on the back its going to be ok isn't it..
I guess that will be the end of GA. Good luck to the piston operators out there. If you can't make it in to any of the cadetships it means you will never fly for an airline and thus have the potential to make a reasonable wage. So who in their right mind would fork out 80k to go and fly a death trap in the bush?
Have a mate thats a captain on a Q400 and he has an interesting/insightful point of view on the matter of his copilot 200 hr cadets.
I love the gloss of it all. If we all pat each other on the back its going to be ok isn't it..
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When are Dumb and Dumber going to return and face the music at the senate inquiry? It is disgusting that these individuals have this amount of contempt for a parliamentary inquiry, the laws of the land and its people.
Its a slap in the face to the australian traveling community as a whole.
Its a slap in the face to the australian traveling community as a whole.
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Stalin,
Fair comment, my figure for 2009 was wrong, only related to continuing execs. But I don't think it is possible to make the claim of highest paid based on 2010 figures.
Dixon's contract was outrageous whether Clifford would ever sanction anything similar remains to be seen, but to date the indications are better.
However, can you tell me where Geoff Dixons $10mill payout figure is disclosed? It should be there in the exec remuneration figures should it not?
He was an Exec after all and it was an Exec payout.
He was an Exec after all and it was an Exec payout.
Dixon's contract was outrageous whether Clifford would ever sanction anything similar remains to be seen, but to date the indications are better.
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Wasn't Dixon's payout at the same time some 75 pilots faced retrenchments unless the pilots could find savings of $8 million which they did by taking leave and working reduced hours? Is it any wonder none of the staff are engaged?
Take a read of Sandiland's latest post with his take on Virgin's appearance at the enquiry. Think JB has hung AJ/BB out to dry.... nice work John ! What does it all mean for Pacific Blue though??
edit: Look I didn't quite get it all but it seems the senators wanted to get on the record (after a discussion with CASA 'in camera' I would imagine) that the Jetstar Cadet programme hasn't been run in accordance with the CASA approval and there may be some suggestion of foul play somewhere.
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Kelpie - correct and perhaps one or two other issues for CASA to respond to as a result of 'other' testimony.
Senator Zen is definately on the chase with CASA - Jumping ahead, I strongly suspect the Committee's outcomes will see the Minister having to discuss making a few changes not least articulating what the CASA acronym actually stands for.
AT
Senator Zen is definately on the chase with CASA - Jumping ahead, I strongly suspect the Committee's outcomes will see the Minister having to discuss making a few changes not least articulating what the CASA acronym actually stands for.
AT
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Another piece of excellent journalism from Ben. I just wish mainstream media would catch on.
Virgin Blue flies the flag at Senate inquiry
March 18, 2011 – 3:34 pm, by Ben Sandilands
There have been several major disclosures at the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety standards this afternoon.
For continuity this report about the morning session, which has already appeared in Crikey, precedes those reports which will be posted later today.
This morning, when Qantas and Jetstar failed to show up as expected for a Senate inquiry public hearing into pilot training and safety standards former Qantas executive GM and now Virgin Virgin CEO John Borghetti wrapped the group in the Australian flag and promised more local jobs and the reduction of existing off-shore activity where possible.
It was a classic ambush. All that was missing was the Virgin Blue Children’s Choir springing to its feet in the back of the committee room to sing “We’ll always call Australia home.”
On February 25 the Senators were fiercely offended by a Borghetti no show when a token Virgin Blue team sat as shame faced and unresponsive before the inquiry as a bunch of Tokyo Electric executives at a nuclear disaster press conference.
But not this morning. Borghetti said he was reviewing the small amount of work done off shore in the Virgin Blue group’s operations (which includes a Pacific Blue division based in New Zealand) with a view to maximizing Australian jobs.
He announced high level negotiations with Skywest Airlines of WA to set up a cadet pilot program which would, unlike the Jetstar NZ but-working-in-Australia scheme, be based in Australia, paid in Australian dollars, and pay Australian taxes and the superannuation levy.
Borghetti also pledged support for the legislation proposed by independent Senator Nick Xenophon, strengthening the ability of pilots and airline staff to report safety infringements and other related concerns to the authorities, which is also being considered under the inquiry’s terms of reference.
It has been opposed by Qantas and Jetstar and just about everyone else who has been asked the question.
Borghetti and his team of senior executives and flight standards, went out of their way to lay claim to setting higher safety and training standards than required for compliance with the regulatory minimums.
The group’s chief pilot, Stuart Aggs, said compliance was regarded as a consequence of meeting the much higher standards Virgin Blue insisted upon.
The Senate committee is considering whether or not a minimum of 1500 hours actual flying experience should be compulsory for the recruitment of a pilot into the right hand or first officer seat of a mainline jet airliner.
Aggs said he could not recall anyone with less than this amount of real hands on flying experience getting a first officer position in the group, even though the minimum it had set was 1000 hours including 500 hours in multi-engined aircraft, well above the legal minimum of 150 hours that Jetstar saw as acceptable.
The group’s chief pilot said, “We have a green-on-green rule. We do not allow low hours new first officers by our definition to fly with recently promoted captains with low hours as a captain.
“Our risk management doesn’t allow that to happen.”
Both Borghetti and Aggs said that in general terms, the pilot training industry on its own did not produce graduates with sufficient skills to occupy the right hand seat of a Virgin Blue jet. It was considered essential to put such inexperienced pilots through specially tailored Virgin Blue training programs, or to extensively augment their ‘vanilla’ training if they were external candidates.
All of which left the controversial testimony given by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and Jetstar Group CEO Bruce Buchanan, on February 25, in relation to training and safety matters all the more in need of further explanation by both men by a group of senators very keen to hear from them again.
It is not known when Joyce and Buchanan will be available again. They were too busy to attend today.
March 18, 2011 – 3:34 pm, by Ben Sandilands
There have been several major disclosures at the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety standards this afternoon.
For continuity this report about the morning session, which has already appeared in Crikey, precedes those reports which will be posted later today.
This morning, when Qantas and Jetstar failed to show up as expected for a Senate inquiry public hearing into pilot training and safety standards former Qantas executive GM and now Virgin Virgin CEO John Borghetti wrapped the group in the Australian flag and promised more local jobs and the reduction of existing off-shore activity where possible.
It was a classic ambush. All that was missing was the Virgin Blue Children’s Choir springing to its feet in the back of the committee room to sing “We’ll always call Australia home.”
On February 25 the Senators were fiercely offended by a Borghetti no show when a token Virgin Blue team sat as shame faced and unresponsive before the inquiry as a bunch of Tokyo Electric executives at a nuclear disaster press conference.
But not this morning. Borghetti said he was reviewing the small amount of work done off shore in the Virgin Blue group’s operations (which includes a Pacific Blue division based in New Zealand) with a view to maximizing Australian jobs.
He announced high level negotiations with Skywest Airlines of WA to set up a cadet pilot program which would, unlike the Jetstar NZ but-working-in-Australia scheme, be based in Australia, paid in Australian dollars, and pay Australian taxes and the superannuation levy.
Borghetti also pledged support for the legislation proposed by independent Senator Nick Xenophon, strengthening the ability of pilots and airline staff to report safety infringements and other related concerns to the authorities, which is also being considered under the inquiry’s terms of reference.
It has been opposed by Qantas and Jetstar and just about everyone else who has been asked the question.
Borghetti and his team of senior executives and flight standards, went out of their way to lay claim to setting higher safety and training standards than required for compliance with the regulatory minimums.
The group’s chief pilot, Stuart Aggs, said compliance was regarded as a consequence of meeting the much higher standards Virgin Blue insisted upon.
The Senate committee is considering whether or not a minimum of 1500 hours actual flying experience should be compulsory for the recruitment of a pilot into the right hand or first officer seat of a mainline jet airliner.
Aggs said he could not recall anyone with less than this amount of real hands on flying experience getting a first officer position in the group, even though the minimum it had set was 1000 hours including 500 hours in multi-engined aircraft, well above the legal minimum of 150 hours that Jetstar saw as acceptable.
The group’s chief pilot said, “We have a green-on-green rule. We do not allow low hours new first officers by our definition to fly with recently promoted captains with low hours as a captain.
“Our risk management doesn’t allow that to happen.”
Both Borghetti and Aggs said that in general terms, the pilot training industry on its own did not produce graduates with sufficient skills to occupy the right hand seat of a Virgin Blue jet. It was considered essential to put such inexperienced pilots through specially tailored Virgin Blue training programs, or to extensively augment their ‘vanilla’ training if they were external candidates.
All of which left the controversial testimony given by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and Jetstar Group CEO Bruce Buchanan, on February 25, in relation to training and safety matters all the more in need of further explanation by both men by a group of senators very keen to hear from them again.
It is not known when Joyce and Buchanan will be available again. They were too busy to attend today.
Last edited by The Kelpie; 18th Mar 2011 at 08:10.
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McGrath
Seemed to be an issue on basing. I think what was discussed was that CASA approved cadets at MEL SYD and SEQ. Someone changed the wording of the approval. If this was the approval why were JQ dishing out NZ employment Contracts??
Otherwise what I have posted is the summary.
It was very short (less than 5 mins) but it seemed that the Senators were very keen to get the information on the Hansard record as it had obviously been discussed during the period of 'in camera' evidence.
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The Kelpie
Seemed to be an issue on basing. I think what was discussed was that CASA approved cadets at MEL SYD and SEQ. Someone changed the wording of the approval. If this was the approval why were JQ dishing out NZ employment Contracts??
Otherwise what I have posted is the summary.
It was very short (less than 5 mins) but it seemed that the Senators were very keen to get the information on the Hansard record as it had obviously been discussed during the period of 'in camera' evidence.
More to Follow
The Kelpie
Last edited by The Kelpie; 18th Mar 2011 at 05:41.
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Clearly Mr Dolan there is something wrong if your organisation put this in the filing tray without investigation!!
Jetstar pilots ‘feared they would die’
March 18, 2011 – 4:28 pm, by Ben Sandilands
The pilots of a Jetstar wide bodied A330-200 flight leaving Darwin late last October thought they were going to die when the jet was caught in a severe storm down draft according to testimony from the Richard Woodward, Vice President of the Australian and International Pilots Association to the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety this afternoon.
Details of the incident caught the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan, by surprise as he sat in the committee room waiting to appear with CASA before the inquiry .
The ATSB has previously decided not to investigate the incident after it had been reported to it, but Dolan conceded after hearing Woodward that the safety investigator had made that decision without interviewing either pilot.
Woodward said the incident which occurred in severe weather could have resulted in a hull loss and raised some very relevant issues about the quality of storm weather information available to pilots at the airport where traffic is under RAAF control.
According to AIPA the pilots held their flight at the end of the runway for ten minutes trying all channels to try and get better information about the extent and severity of the supercell over the airport.
Once airborne they hit the down draft close to the ground and were unable to gain altitude for some period. “I spoke to both of them and they told me they thought they were going to die”, Woodward said.
“Did the (military) controllers have access to the necessary data? I suspect the answer is ‘No’,” Woodward said.
Asked about the incident by the inquiry, Dolan said “I intend to ask for more information to verify the information on which we acted in not pursuing an inquiry.”
He said “We did not receive information that there was not a positive rate of climb.”
Asked if the ATSB had interviewed the pilots, Dolan replied ‘No.’
In fact there was a positive rate of climb, but it was severely degraded.
Plane Talking has learned that immediately after taking off at a rate of climb of 2000 feet per minute the climb rate fell to only 200 feet per minute when the jet was down to 180 feet above the ground in an incident last all of 12 seconds.
The incident was raised by AIPA over its concerns that pilots are not heard when they need to be heard in relation to serious safety issues
March 18, 2011 – 4:28 pm, by Ben Sandilands
The pilots of a Jetstar wide bodied A330-200 flight leaving Darwin late last October thought they were going to die when the jet was caught in a severe storm down draft according to testimony from the Richard Woodward, Vice President of the Australian and International Pilots Association to the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety this afternoon.
Details of the incident caught the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan, by surprise as he sat in the committee room waiting to appear with CASA before the inquiry .
The ATSB has previously decided not to investigate the incident after it had been reported to it, but Dolan conceded after hearing Woodward that the safety investigator had made that decision without interviewing either pilot.
Woodward said the incident which occurred in severe weather could have resulted in a hull loss and raised some very relevant issues about the quality of storm weather information available to pilots at the airport where traffic is under RAAF control.
According to AIPA the pilots held their flight at the end of the runway for ten minutes trying all channels to try and get better information about the extent and severity of the supercell over the airport.
Once airborne they hit the down draft close to the ground and were unable to gain altitude for some period. “I spoke to both of them and they told me they thought they were going to die”, Woodward said.
“Did the (military) controllers have access to the necessary data? I suspect the answer is ‘No’,” Woodward said.
Asked about the incident by the inquiry, Dolan said “I intend to ask for more information to verify the information on which we acted in not pursuing an inquiry.”
He said “We did not receive information that there was not a positive rate of climb.”
Asked if the ATSB had interviewed the pilots, Dolan replied ‘No.’
In fact there was a positive rate of climb, but it was severely degraded.
Plane Talking has learned that immediately after taking off at a rate of climb of 2000 feet per minute the climb rate fell to only 200 feet per minute when the jet was down to 180 feet above the ground in an incident last all of 12 seconds.
The incident was raised by AIPA over its concerns that pilots are not heard when they need to be heard in relation to serious safety issues
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Critical question: Did the Jetstar Cadets themselves and their Training Captains, and for that matter all operational / rostering employees know of, or aware of the full range of operational restrictions (as in the approval from CASA) in the use of a Cadet Pilot? Perhaps you could take that one Mr Rindfleish (I would give you you proper title but I do not feel you are befitting of it!)?
I ask the question because these would have had to have been incorporated into their Operations Manual (OM1)
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The Kelpie
I ask the question because these would have had to have been incorporated into their Operations Manual (OM1)
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The Kelpie
Last edited by The Kelpie; 18th Mar 2011 at 06:09.
I have the distinct feeling that AJ and BB, probably backed by the Board, decided that QF's lobbying power in Canberra was sufficient to frustrate anything Xenophon and the Senate might wish to do.
This is the "too big to be allowed to fail" strategy.
My second distinct feeling is that QF is going to unleash a major assault on the Qantas Sale Act.
The strategy for changing that is akin to the story about the boy convicted of murdering both his parents and about to be sentenced; he threw himself on the mercy of the Court because he was an orphan.
This is the "too big to be allowed to fail" strategy.
My second distinct feeling is that QF is going to unleash a major assault on the Qantas Sale Act.
The strategy for changing that is akin to the story about the boy convicted of murdering both his parents and about to be sentenced; he threw himself on the mercy of the Court because he was an orphan.
Trust me when I say that having 200 hours from BFTs, 2FTs and your operational conversion, and 200 hours from Oxford Aviation Academy is not the same thing!
Compare apples with apples.
Compare apples with apples.
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DominicYPGV,
I agree with you ... BUT
The way I see todays airline cadet programs is purely another revenue stream. Whether it be overpriced training (because these cadets are all self funded), reduced pay because they are cadets, paying that reduced pay in some overseas currency, avoiding IR laws, or sidestepping superannuation payments, someone is always profiting.
I always thought the purpose of cadet programs was to supplement the normal intake of more experienced pilots, not anymore!
Maybe thats why they are called schemes, or should that be shams.....
I agree with you ... BUT
The way I see todays airline cadet programs is purely another revenue stream. Whether it be overpriced training (because these cadets are all self funded), reduced pay because they are cadets, paying that reduced pay in some overseas currency, avoiding IR laws, or sidestepping superannuation payments, someone is always profiting.
I always thought the purpose of cadet programs was to supplement the normal intake of more experienced pilots, not anymore!
Maybe thats why they are called schemes, or should that be shams.....