I do hope you are right, but as someone with experience of the Qantas Groups attitude to negotiations I suspect 15-25% rises are as likely as us seeing a huge fleet of Uber air taxis flying around Melbourne next year. Even in the good times Qantas management sticks doggedly to the ‘no more than 3% per year total contract cost’, couple this with their ability this year to site softening pax figure, volatile fuel prices and an uncertain global economic outlook, I think it is tough times ahead for the negotiators.of course a bit of airline wide industrial action may help focus the minds, but as I have said, getting all pilots to join is unlikely, and of course they have many other pilot resources amongst the group to leverage their position. How about revoking the ‘active hold’ status for Mainline of any pilot who partakes in industrial action, using Jetstar NZ pilots to fly some routes during industrial action, farming out work to Network, Eastern etc or indeed returning capacity to Mainline along with offering positions to non-striking pilots. Are we so certain the ‘group’ pilots will stick together for the common good....... I truely hope that something good comes from the negotiation, history would tell us otherwise.

My concern with the Tiger EBA is the 2.5%. It's only a bit less than the "standard" 3% but over a 20-40 year career it can add up. Hopefully next Tiger EBA it will improve.

Some of what you suggest I believe would be illegal

It’s never stopped them before.

The market has finally shifted and probably the largest change seen in the low cost space. 3% isn’t going to cut it. Tiger has set the new going rate.

Jetstar has always paid more than Tiger. Getting a deal over the line that is 10-15% less than Tiger is going to upset a lot of people. It will create a very fractured pilot body.

As a JQ pilot I would be happy if they rolled the high line allowance into base pay (company hasn’t figured out how the use the available days anyway) and give the company more standby coverage for an increase in base pay (which the company would go for as it would reduce their WDO bill).

This would hopefully have NB capt 220K base plus 3% increases per annum for the life of the agreement.

Would you still be doing 75 hours per month to their 60 for that figure? That’s still a pretty huge discrepancy.

65 hrs and 220K would be fairly palatable fir most of the pilot group I think.

There will be many who say this is not enough, but they only need 51% yes vote after all.

I love how poster’s just write what they want to suit their argument.

That’s great, why don’t you try using Year 4 figures for a start.

Even with Jetstar on a hypothetical 220k + high line + DTA + 65 threshold, a Jetstar Pilot would only be ahead until a Year 4 QF S/haul pilot did five hours overtime. Then every hour after that QF is ahead; and gaining substantially.

Remembering this would be 2019 figures for JQ vs 2017 for QF. QF’s about to be new EBA will see them even further ahead and that’s with Jetstar pilots more efficient in almost every aspect.

It depends if the hourly overtime rate increases at Jetstar, it’s significantly lower than QF.
You also need to add two lots of 3% to your figures to bring QF up to 2019 (latest EBA negotiations reflect this)

Everyone seems to think that PIA will be pickets and lockouts.

Fortnightly stop work meetings will get the point across.

It will be, the Qantas pilots were locked out for wearing ‘red ties’ and making ‘PA’s’. Stop work meetings will certainly illicit a response and also rely a very high participation amongst the crew, it will get nasty. I was part of a large airline when the pilots filed for industrial action and we all promptly got letters from the company requiring that we indicated if we intended to take part so that they could arrange the with holding of pay for the potential lock out period. Funnily enough quite a few union members told the union that they wouldn’t be going on strike and were dismissed from the union.

The way I read it is you can’t be locked out for a stop work meeting.

The company can’t pay us, and we can’t accept payment for the period of the meetings, as long as it’s less than 4 hours.

It would be interesting to get clarification on this should it come to it. I maintain a measured amount of optimism it won’t.

I’m just being realistic.

We all know how it will go. The company will offer us roughly the same agreement plus 3% which will be voted down, then an agreement which won’t be great but will get enough of the pilot group to vote yes for it to get across the line.

Those that think a bit of PIA is going to make the company roll over and give us a 20% pay rise are kidding themselves.

When was the last time one Qantas Group EBA was markedly improved while the rest got standard 3% pay and a few job specific concerns addressed? Genuinely curious.

Tiger has a whopping 2 EBAs and the Virgin Group in general seems to be much less adversarial between work groups.

Pilots striking and the company acquiescing to 15% -justifiable or not- seems fanciful when with 6 months you’ll have a company wide shut down...again.

Your missing the point. The point here is the market’s going rate for a LCC Pilot in this country has shifted. You have been underpaid and the Tiger pilot body has fixed that.

This is also happening in retail. Woolworths/Wesfarmers are in the process of new Agreements for all its businesses. They are all 10-15% increases over previous awards. It’s the largest shift in the sector ever seen. Woolworths now has a multi hundred million dollar wage increase to absorb.

Fly for Jetstar and work 10% harder, fly 25% more people and get paid 15% less than your competitor who isn’t profitable and is operated more as a ultra low cost carrier.

The company can’t just offer 3% They need much more flexibility and stand by coverage to cater for what will now be a domestic crew flying long (med) haul as well as 1-4 day trips becoming the norm with the Jeppesen Optimizer, and also more stand by coverage to limit expensive WDOs.

The current coverage won’t cut it and so it’ll be in the interest of Jetstar to get this EBA over the line and to do that it’ll need to be competitive. Otherwise they’ll find a rolling NO vote and box themselves into a corner with NEOs fast approaching and a current inflexible EBA for intl ops.