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600: I enjoyed that very much. :ok:
I reckon eventually management will cave in and protect Qantas flying, however I fear by Aug 24 there will be voluntary redundancies or forced redundancies a-plenty. :( |
Today I read that AIPA are demanding the following:
- free travel for pilots in addition to already discounted concessional travel; and - adjustment of Jetstar pilot salaries in-line with Qantas award rates i.e. same rate of pay. Could you please advise if the two aforementioned "demands" are factually correct. |
Airtags,
Can I please add one more to your (brilliant) list: "We agree with what Qantas ambassador John Travolta says - "there's no-one I'd rather have at the controls, than a Qantas pilot". We have been given stickers, lanyards, bag tags etc saying "secure our flying" "as the company rejected union claims it was sending pilots' jobs offshore." |
QANTAS SO's are paid double what they should be. Plain and simple, like it or not.
I agree that a career path for pilots needs to be brought back, however you need to realise that you will have to sacrifice somethings. |
Eight bucks a ride?
I'm trying to work this out: Everybody knows that those senior Qantas captains are paid about a quarter million a year, is that right?
For about a thousand hours flying a year? Which means that in a full bus to LAX, each passenger is paying about $8.33 to have a captain up the sharp end who knows what he or she is doing? And if we were to DOUBLE the Captain's salary, to half a million a year (could afford THREE ex-wives and a new Holden with that...) then each passenger would be paying $16.60 for a captain to get them to LAX. The air fare would rise eight bucks. Now let's see: a jet pilot trained by one of the Asian Air Forces to the north of us would probably be very happy to do the job for about $12,000 a year. To him, that would be a pay-rise of nearly double his former salary. The air fare to LAX could then be reduced by about $7.90 per passenger. Of course, the landing might not be quite so smooth. There may be quite a bit more smoke involved. Is my back-of-the-envelope figuring out by an order of magnitude? Maths was never my strong suit... But is that what we're arguing about here? Eight bucks to LAX? Cheers |
Originally Posted by empire4
QANTAS SO's are paid double what they should be. Plain and simple, like it or not.
@JohnMcGhie: I dunno about your numbers/process but yeah, we're not talking about much at all! 2/3rds of bugger all!! :hmm: |
TV
Could you please advise if the two aforementioned "demands" are factually correct. N |
Apologies Mods if this is already posted somewhere else but, once again, Ben Sandilands appears to have his finger on the pulse................
Qantas pilot dispute turns to issues other than pay July 12, 2011 – 4:24 pm, by Ben Sandilands Since its pilots voted overwhelmingly to support any union call for lawful or protected industrial action Qantas management has started arguing with its pilots about its plans to restructure the airline group rather than their pay claims for a tiny 2.5 per cent three year pay deal. This may prove to be a game losing own goal. To boil down the management response it is that union demands that all Qantas pilots be trained to current Qantas standards and have their jobs paid and located in Australia are “excessive and unsustainable” and a “veto on change.” Hullo Treasury, the ATO, and members of parliaments? Can you drag your heads out of the trough in the Qantas Chairmans Lounges long enough to digest something more important than your perks? This is dangerous ground for Qantas, given that this implies that current piloting culture of excellence is unaffordable, and that jobs sent abroad will somehow translate into bigger profits at a time when mismanagement continues to drive a shrinking Qantas market share further toward oblivion. The notion that a smaller Qantas, but one increasingly augmented by Qantas controlled and financed entities flown and serviced by labor paid under Asian terms and conditions, is going to be a better Qantas, has become the real issue in this dispute. The Australian and International Pilots Association has wedged management by taking on the role of defending public perceptions of Qantas excellence rather than promoting their claims for improved pay and conditions. Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce has already committed himself to a wide ranging restructuring announcement on August 24, the day it reports its full year to June 30 results to shareholders who haven’t had a dividend for two years. Joyce’s frequent claims that Qantas international is unsustainable and his equally frequent brushing aside of requests for disclosure as to how much that situation reflects the paying of costs associated with the Jetstar franchise can be read alongside claims by Jetstar group CEO, Bruce Buchanan, that lower paid lower experience pilots are better than those whose pay and conditions reflect a much more costly company investment in safety standards and professional experience. Joyce was the CEO of Jetstar when it nearly destroyed an airliner in 2007 because it improperly changed and consequently degraded the standard operating procedures for a missed approach in its A320 fleet, one of which then nearly flew into the ground in fog trying to climb away from Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport with the engines set to reduced rather than go-around thrust settings. In his own public guidance Joyce has talked up the merits of offshore alliances, ventures and service agreements, all of which remove from the direct control of Qantas those very things the public expect it to uphold, and which obviously threaten union jobs too. After the very serious QF32 incident on November 4 last year, in which a defective Rolls-Royce engine disintegrated and severely damaged an Airbus A380, Joyce attacked the engine maker for its secrecy in not telling Qantas things it knew about that engine, and about its decision to ‘fix’ the deficiencies in its own sweet time. Yet Joyce continues to support such service agreements, where Qantas saves money, but is at the mercy of service failures by third parties that are replacing its own maintenance and engineering facilities and their decades of experience. Similarly the airline is resisting Qantas pilot concerns that the carrier’s professional piloting standards are being traded in for external providers of pilots, some of whom will replace Australian pilots by being based somewhere in Asia, and flying to and from this country and then onwards to Europe and other destinations. In what has been interpreted in pilot ranks as an effort to reduce redundancy costs in the impending August 24 restructure, Qantas last week told its pilots that they could apply for leave without absence for three years to fly as first officers for Emirates, its most aggressive and successful long haul competitor. For travellers uninterested in labor-management disputes, this is also a row about what Qantas will be in the future. Will it continue to be ‘the Spirit of Australia’, and will it continue to chest beat over being the national flag carrier when more of its experienced pilots are flying for foreign carriers, having been replaced by lower paid, less experienced foreign pilots? It is a very perverse outlook. Experienced Qantas pilots forced abroad, to strengthen the likes of Emirates and Singapore Airlines, while the pilots they reject get hired by Qantas Asian franchises because they are cheap, inexperienced and supposedly good for the bottom line. This report appeared in the Crikey subscriber Daily Mail earlier today |
QANTAS SO's are paid double what they should be. Plain and simple, like it or not. |
Empire4, it looks like your ego is getting in the way of facts. You appear to look at a person's rank to estimate his/her worth. A QF S/O is as much a pilot (& may even have better skills) as one who joins Jetstar, Virgin, Tiger etc as a F/O. The fact that they don't yet get the opportunity to carry out take-offs and landings on the large widebody aircraft that they are rated on doesn't make them less valuable to the operation than an A320/B737 F/O.
The reason QF has been prepared (in the past) to pay the S/O's well is to attract the best people. If that level of remuneration was not available, these pilots would become domestic F/O's instead of joining QF. |
Aren't QF S/Os paid on par say with Cathay S/O's?
Doesn't Qantas get around with 2 S/Os in a four man crew versus 2 Capts and 2 F/Os or versus perhaps 1 Capt, 2 F/Os and 1 S/O? Crew costs overall would be less then for Qantas per flight - makes sense to pay for experienced S/Os in that case Good result on the PIA ballot boys and girls - sends a loud message....now whether the dimwit management care to listen is another question...:D |
QF PIA Results
In the George Negus interview, George asked Richard if he would give a guarantee that passengers/customers would not turn up to airports and find their flights cancelled. Richard replied by saying there are no guarantees in life. Then almost in the same breath, he said, AIPA are asking Qantas for a guarantee that, if its a Qantas ticket and a Qantas aircraft, it should be flown by a Qantas Pilot.
No guarantees in life......Hopefully this statement wont come back to haunt him later on. |
Spoken like a true sky god, going Boeing. I don't work for QF, but support your stand 100%. The implications for the rest of us if your management are successful are obvious. But pray tell what makes a QF s/o better than me, a lowly domestic f/o?:=
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The way I read GB's post was that if they hadn't become QF S/O's then they would have been as good as you Porch, and capable of being a F/O as well. I didn't read any 'PutDown' in the post. At least you got a 'SkyGod' shot in there though. Feeling better now?
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I'm not bitter and twisted, nor is my ego getting in the way of my opinion and I'm not disagreeing with the general direction that AIPA is wanting to head towards.
I belieive strongly that QF pilots are amongst the best in the world, and should be renumerated in such a way. However, by ensuring a constant and attractive career path for a young pilot you will also ensure they will go on to earn good money, at a safe and stable airline, in Australia. You don't have to pay $160,000 PA for a A380 SO to ensure you have an excellent pilot, especially if at the end of the day there is no airline for him when he becomes an FO. What you need to ensure is that you can maintain a business, which is competitive for both the employer and employees. how are you going to compete with Asian airlines? Yes, I would take one of my Aussie mates flying anyday. Unfortunetly I'm not the public and they don't care. Whether this be right or wrong is not the question. Its purely dollar driven.The fact is that arguments of Asian airlines being substandard can only be backed up by inside industry knowledge and not crash statistics or incidents. There is always an assumed risk, whether it is big or small changes with the individual. This risk will not change proportionally with the ticket prices or pay between airline carriers. This is, unfortunetly where we have found ourselves in the aviation business. |
Nope Trent, I don't. We each obviously read it differently. Glass half full or empty I guess. Seems pretty obvious to me that the post was worded such that being a domestic f/o was only a second preference to being an s/o. Each to his own I guess.
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As usual everything get's muddled, 160k for an A380 S/O yeah it happens but only to the few at the top, who wants to move to an A330 S/O from an F/O position? I guess not many because you would generally take a 20-40% paycut to be one coming from a domestic F/O, and thats not only a QF F/O even from jetstar you'd struggle to maintain your salary!
And empire4 I cant speak for all Asian airlines but in SIA I can guarantee you that the flight deck crew of a 4 man long haul flight cost more than similar QF crew. 2 Captains 2 F/O's, and an S/O is only a training position usually for around 6 months unlike QF or Cathay. Anyway this is not about pay for different positions this is about a real threat to the whole Australian economy, you think this is a global market? Well the real problem is the flow on effects, quote, I was just reading how Gina Rinehart is lobbying to have a special economic zone for a new mine project in Queensland that will allow her to fly in Foreign labour as they see fit, to the exclusion of Australian employees. I think the principle is the main game and no point arguing about side issues at the moment, wish all the best for the QF guys and girls rising to the challenge! :ok: |
The fact is that arguments of Asian airlines being substandard can only be backed up by inside industry knowledge and not crash statistics or incidents. How about Indonesia? India? Thailand? Malaysia? Cambodia? Vietnam? China? You need to read a little more widely. |
A few simple questions from an intereted bystander from afar
An aviation enthusiast SLF, trying to keep an open mind on the current situation....
Just curious on a couple of things....if I may. 1) Are QF domestic and Jetstar pilots represented by AIPA and also able to partake in the PIA? If not, how likely is it that QF management will be able to use these other pilots in the event of PIA by QF international pilots. Understand the issue of different aircraft payload/range and route experience etc, but surely there will be a substantial capacity "ready to hand" with which to overcome any strike action. 2) The ballot paper specified non-adherence to QF company policy along the lines of substituting PAs, and uniforms, refusing to use company SMS etc. How does this constitute protected industrial action. Striking is one thing, but once at work would it not be a requirement to observe company policy - else be subject to disciplinary action? Appreciate the time of anyone for taking the trouble to repond. |
Network, I'll try and answer your questions to the best of my ability!
1. QF shorthaul and Jetstar are not affected by this vote and must continue to work as normal. Should they refuse to do so it is considered to be a secondary boycott and individuals/ the union may be subject to significant fines. The only Qantas pilots covered are those under the long haul EA (767, A330, B747 and A380). 2. Any variation from normal work practices is considered industrial action. AIPA have applied to undertake certain activities that differ from normal practice but which will NOT impact safety or security. Fair Work Australia (the former industrial relations ombudsman) has approved a ballot which Long Haul pilots overwhelmingly voted for. Provided long haul pilots comply with the conditions of the PIA ballot, they are untouchable (at least in a legal sense). |
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