jetstar moving Aussie jobs offshore?
 

Heard on the "Rumour File", (radio 3AW, Melb) this morning that jetstar is moving their Flight Planning & Crewing departments to the Philippines

Anyone know anything about this?

Manilaaaaaa!!!

where ever they will pay the least:ugh:

I don't know about crewing but the Dispatch part is very true.:mad:

Known as "Outsourcing" and has been going on for years in other industries. Ever wondered why when you've phoned a call center the person on the other end of the line has an Indian accent ?

High speed internet has made it possible to use cheap English speaking workers located thousands of miles away. Many jobs which don't require a "hands on" presence can be done from abroad; administration, accounts, customer service just to name a few.

Unfortunately that's the way things are going, look at the manufacturing and textile industries. Modern transport and communications has brought everything closer.

Time to think of reskilling if you're employed in an area at risk.

There are advantages though, I'm having dental work done in Bangkok at one third of what an Australian dentist would charge.:ok:

Excellent. Just what am I looking for, a dentist in Bangkok. Who do you recommend ?

See PM as unable to post commercial link. Anyone else interested Google Promjai.

spoken by a bloke who clearly doesn't have a clue what the dispatchers actually do.

The fact that this has not set alarm bells ringing worries me greatly.

More outsourcing, cadet pilots on ridiculous conditions, cancelling new hire courses......whats going on at Jetstar????? Maybe the pressure from Tiger, Air Asia etc is starting to hurt??? Is the golden child of Qantas becoming a bit of a problem?....More interesting times ahead. Qantas could be in a bit of sticky situation here, Virgin targeting the premium and Tiger attacking the lower end :ouch: ouch!

You can only outsource to a degree before it starts costing more in the long run because you lose the expertise in the core buisness. But i guess it makes someones KPI's look good.:}

I'm well aware of what a dispatcher does, this requires a hands on presence to sort out problems and deal with the crew and passengers, which would be difficult from Manila. The "back office" part of dispatch could possibly be done else where.

If you think about it, air traffic control is "outsourced" in many countries. How many ATC centers are located at an airport ? Many controllers never see an actual aircraft as they are located in a building miles away.

Brisbane Centre is responsible for the airspace from 45 nm north of Sydney, up to the airspace boundaries with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in the north, and east to the airspace boundaries with New Zealand and Fiji.

Better hope Airservices don't get the idea of outsourcing to solve the controller shortage or approach could be handing you over to someone in Asia for the enroute part of your flight.:eek:

It's fine with me to start outsourcing the dispatcher's jobs overseas so long as they don't start outsourcing the tech crew jobs........oh wait a minute:eek:

Not sure where I heard it but the saying goes 'there's only one thing shareholders hate more than bad press and that's a bad quarterly report'.

It's the price Aussies have to pay if they want dirt cheap flights and a fat dividend at the end of the financial year...

"It's the price Aussies have to pay if they want dirt cheap flights and a fat dividend at the end of the financial year..."

Its the price Aussies pay for enjoying uncompetitive wages.

When are they outsourcing management to a more cost effective model?:hmm:

When are they outsourcing management to a more cost effective model?

Never they are very important people :ok:

Had to take the bait. What are competitive wages? What standard of living would we have with 'competitive' wages.

How come when managers wages are going through the roof it is due to the 'competition' to get the right people, and this same argument is used when trying to suppress any argument for a salary increase for anyone below 'management' level.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Metro Man

I'm well aware of what a dispatcher does, this requires a hands on presence to sort out problems and deal with the crew and passengers

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A flight dispatchers does not 'sort out problems' or deal with 'crew and passengers' - they (high level) create flight plans...

Depending on which country and which airline the duties of a dispatcher involve flight planning, load sheets, take off speeds, met reports and a lot of running around making sure everything is happening as it's supposed to. It's a high pressure job needing good people skills.

Dispatchers are onboard dealing with the flight crew prior to departure and may get to deal with difficult passengers who are being off loaded.

Most airlines would be using computerised flight planning so you are unlikely to see a dispatcher with an enroute chart and wizz wheel.

The man on the ground may need to actually be there, office staff may not.

In a free market supply and demand rule.

Qualified, skilled people who are in short supply command high wages. The licenced engineer signing out an aircraft which he has just changed the engine on is difficult and expensive to replace therefore he is well renumerated to encourage him to stay. If he takes his skills abroad he can expect good rewards.

Unqualified, unskilled and semi skilled people are rarely in short supply and don't have to be well paid as they can easily be replaced, unless the unions have a strangle hold on the company. In this case a baggage loader gets paid far more than he is worth considering his qualifications, time to train and nature of the work he performs. Should he seek work abroad eg Asia or the Middle East his pay will be a small fraction of what he would get in Australia. Similarly if he looked for a non union job at home with the skill requirement of loading bags his pay would also be much lower.

While said worker is quite happy to take the extra money he also looks for the lowest price when out shopping and has no qualms about driving a Korean car, wearing clothes from Fiji and using household goods which were made in China.

Now will someone explain how Australian companies have to pay certain people more than they are worth and still compete with foreign companies which don't ?

Well if they only do flight planning then it's a lot easier to have the job done overseas. Perhaps that was the idea when the company was started ?

What a bad impression for Qantas. Although Jetstar is now standing on its own two feet it's still part of the Qantas Group and I think it's completely unacceptable to outsource both Flight Planning and Load Planning overseas.

Wait until an incident occurs due to work overload for the guys in Manila or the fact that many of these workers will have no prior aviation experience. Speak to a phillipino and you will soon hear that they sound like a robot.

Jetstar could cut costs and modify contracts like Aer Lingus and BA have to stay afloat. They could look at other options like cutting the CEO, and other Big shots salary until the airline recovers from whatever mess it is in.

I CERTAINLY WILL NEVER FLY JETSTAR. BRING BACK AUSSIES JOB'S AND STOP OUTSOURCING.

Pretty high and mighty of you all. They started the whole operation with Pay-For-Training and the rest of us shrugged our shoulders as we saw things going downhill from there.

For the record. Mesa, Valujet and most of the other PFT operations in America didn't amount to anything.

Do you think if you go through this profession as acting like a whore, you'll ever get respect from anyone?

"You pay peanuts..."

"most of the other PFT operations in America didn't amount to anything."

Make a bet. There are lots of them.

I think it was Southwest Air that started the 'pay for training' ball rolling, ie you had to have a B737 endorsement to work for them. Look at the size of them now. However they are a good company to work for, unionised but flexible workforce and didn't lay anyone off during the financial crisis.

Perfectly acceptable alternative to a full service airline for a flying career. Unfortunately not many other low cost airlines come close.

And here is the reason why:Sourced from:Employee Ownership in the Airlines

They also encourage long term employment, pay above the industry standard and have a management regime that goes out of their way to listen to and value their employees.

In return they gain high levels of employee engagement, passenger satisfaction and the success and profitability that comes from that.

Unlike a particular airline "Group" I can think of............:ugh:

As stated above, the Southwest model is interesting in that they actually try and look after their employees. It's probably one reason why they are still here.

Pornstar would be much more profitable if its' managers followed the Southwest concept - right now, no one gives a toss because of the way we are treated.

The latest flight dispatch exercise is yet another example of short sighted commercial department management action. :ugh:

Word on the street is when the Asian staff are all trained and the bugs sorted out that QF are going to go down the same path.

Hey Metro Man

Whats wrong with Asian controllers?....have you flown in Hong Kong?....you reckon Australian controllers are better?

And I'll bet my left one that while the "offshoring" savings will figure in some middle managers bonus this year, the cost of all the :mad: ups it creates certainly won't!!

Are you serious Monk? I have and they are.............period.

The manager will collect bonus for employing the consultant who works out how to screw the worker . The consultant has to take the blame if it goes wrong thats part of the deal. Managers cant lose,

Asian controllers vary in standard depending on country. Hong Kong is excellent, best of the bunch by far.:ok:

At times Indonesia and the Philippines can leave a bit to be desired.:hmm:

Having worked with dispatchers from Asia for years, I have to say they are good and capable people.

The days of individualized briefings from dispatch people who knew almost as much about the routes as the pilots, are long gone. Now the likes of LIDO make it a fairly automated process that can be done from anywhere.

Same with loadsheets, most airlines do them at their home base or wherever the IT network is based. Could be Bangalore these days. Makes no difference.

The perils of globalization - that's why brickies make the money they do - hard to lay bricks anywhere but locally. :rolleyes:

CR,

The cr*p system that Jetstar uses is a far cry from LIDO (which is a great system).

You pay peanuts and you'll get the lowest common denominator, and that's exactly what we are dealing with now. :mad:

Outages and delays have already figured heavily.

DON'T get me started on LIDO, it's deficiencies and why it cost Lufthansa hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to QANTAS when it could not do simple things that Capricorn has done since 1992! :ugh::ugh::ugh:

Gentleman , dont let your frustration with Jeetstar allow you to become xenophobic . If you are arrogant enough to think that only Ozzies can be good controllers despatchers / mechanics piots etc then you have grown up insulated in la la land.

Worried about taking Ozzies jobs offshore is an entirely different argument to saying the said people performing the jobs are incompetant.

Tankengine

I have obviously had a much better experience with Lido in another life.

Fourgolds, I read into the above comments that it's more to do with the quality of the information than who provides it.

There are good and bad pilots, dispatchers etc., etc., everywhere - it's human nature.

I too have been working with Asian dispatchers for two decades, and with fifty percent of the flights, the dispatchers have been 'offshore' (the inbound sectors). Generally a very high standard and some of them excellent.