The future of Qantas engineering
 

Here is my prediction of the future of QF engineering and Maintenance.

GD will announce that a new company will be formed with SASCO to carry out all QF maintenance before the arrival of the A380. They'll need to bed down an agreement prior to its arrival as they have already stated they will have joint maintenance on each others aircraft.

QF will maintain a small number of LAMES to ensure that they can ensure day to day certification but the majority will be employed by the new joint venture(just like SASCO and HAECO for Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific)

The new joint venture will have a contract for two years or thereabouts guaranteeing work by QF. They will also guarantee all workers entitlements so QF will be able to say that everyone is being looked after.

Either just before or just after the two years is up the new joint venture will go into receivership and be out of business, unable to carry out the work cheaper than MRO's in mainland China/Singapore/Malaysia.

Whilst the joint venture company guaranteed all entitlements for workers, it will be worthless as QF ensured they have no assets(Ansett here we come!!).

GD will say magnanimously step in to the breach but says"we have to compete internationally". QF will start up a new company-at arms length of course so they they are not responsible for any of the joint ventures' mistakes/obligations. However everyone will have to take a 20 % pay reduction to compete with MRO's in China/Malaysia/Singapore.

With the Howard Government in control of both houses of parliament, the unions will be powerless to stop it!!

Qantas has just appointed a new manager of Line Maintenance. He has no experience of line maint operations or the environment it operates in. He is renowned however for all but closing down the Sydney engine overhaul shop and massive redundancies. He has no colleagues in line Line Maint and should have no major problems in implementing redundancies.

Maybe I'm being overly alarmist and pessimistic?. Maybe GD really does want to look after the thousands of people who maintain QF's aircraft?

Someone please tell me it isn't possible and why it can't happen!!
What do you think Mr Qantas?

One of the reason QF builds/buys/leases "dirty big hangars", is to ensure that there is little or no space left for competitors.

They still need the hangar to do the maintenance.They just don't want the resposibility and obligations that come with employing large quantities of highly skilled employees.

They will probably keep training apprentices as they are quite signifcantly cheaper than LAMES. They will probably even increase the rate in future as there is likely to be very little training opportunites for them so turnover will be high.

There are some big changes in the air for QF engineering with the potential to seriously undermine the company if handled poorly. I get the impression they are not going to have too much trouble in filling the rumoured upcoming redundancies.

SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC) is Singapore Ailrlines Engineering Division, Not SASCO.
http://www.siaec.com.sg/


SASCO is not related to SIA
http://www.staero.aero/sasco.html

TTF
 

If things keep going the way they are in this industry, Air Crash Investigation will be a popular show, and no-one will want to fly anymore!!

And if you ask me, 'putting profit before saftey' is just wrong man. When will things ever change?

It's fine to put a levy on tickets when fuel prices go up, but hell theres no way we can put an extra dollar on to a ticket to ensure that the best qualified people maintain the aircraft.
I think that GD's argument for a huge increase in his renumeration was to keep the best people for the job. It should be the same for engineers.

Might have to buy meself a Condo in the southern suburbs of Kuala Lumpur.


K

MELKBQF

ST Aerospace is 55% owned by Temasek, which is the Singapore Government.

Temasek also own 56% of SIA, they also own 19% of Jetstar Asia.

Given the way that the Singapore Government uses its influence through its shareholdings in strategic companies, the scenario described by numbskull seems like a distinct possibility.