People are talking about the bottom few hundred going on LWOP and most probably they will.
I agree that if the flying pick up they can heavy crew until they come back.
Has anyone thought, I bet QF hasn’t, about the significant loss of senior Captains on the A380?
Chances are about half will go in the next few months. A good deal of the 400 guys and gals as well.
Also a sizeable chunk of A330 and a handful of 787 Captains.
Meanwhile we still have the same number of airframes hibernating. Ok, minus the 400.
But what if the flying really picks up? A vaccine comes along? There are 100-200 in the pipeline.
Talk about being caught with your pants down!
How long to train up a A380 Captain and all the residual slots?
Sound silly? Just as silly as suggesting in January that the whole aviation industry would be shutdown by March?

you reckon the A380 is coming back?

I certainly don't. Otherwise they would be parked in Alice Springs with the Singapore Airlines and Scoot aircraft. They are going to the US, in my opinion because in three years time it will be expensive to find A380 ferry crew and QF will no longer have the capability to ferry them overseas themselves.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a20fc29a20.jpg

Apparently the humidity is much less in Arizona compared to Alice Springs.

Plus A380 engineers are readily available nearby in LA for ongoing maintenance

That is what Qantas said anyway.

They'll be back.

They Should be back. If not they are with all the other QF Jets that never came back

Will they be back? I don’t know.
Back in January I didn’t know that the whole aviation industry would be shut down in a few months either.
Does anyone know what aviation will be like next January?
What I do know is that by then Qantas won’t have enough A380 Captains if they do want to reactivate them.
Infact Qantas won’t have a sizeable chunk of their senior Captains?
And they can’t get them back either!
Silly??

I’d say QF have made the smart play here. They don’t have to move them anywhere if they never come back. In my stupid opinion we won’t see them again. This pandemic has already taken away so much from an industry that we all love dearly.

I reckon Qantas want the A380s back. The longer this goes on the less likely that is though. I suspect Qantas will invest in them for the next couple of years in the hope they’ll be needed and kick the can on making a final decision down the road for a while.

There are about 50 A380 Captains over 60. Half the number of A380 Captains so about 6 aeroplanes worth. They could bring back 6 A380s and still not need additional crew. Probably enough notice to train up other crew if they intend on bringing additional A380s back.

There are 44 A330 Captains over 60. About 18% of the total A330 Captains. Similarly I reckon the ramp up would be slow enough that we’d be able to cover for the additional crew if eventually all the A330s are required.

All good points Keg!
Its all a guess isn’t it?
My point is that once those highly trained, qualified line Captains are gone they’re gone!
Can’t get them back if they wanted to. Take time to train up other crew. Take time to replace the replacements.
Who knows???

When has Qantas ever got their Pilot numbers right?

there was one month back in 2006 that i recall

With 3 years to plan I don’t think time is really a factor.
It’s not as through the 380 crew that may finally get stood up will just shave off their beards and step onto a flightdeck anyway.

Find it cute anyone would use the word "plan" at this stage of happenings.
Hope, anticipate, extrapolate, propose, target, project and a whole bunch of other words maybe - but "plan"?

Parallel universe.

Cheers

I find it comical that anyone really believes the A380 will come back...in your dreams! Gone baby forever and there won’t be a send off because they have been a complete distaster financially for QF since they arrived...

If this is the case, what effect will that have on potential CR’s? Would that surplus of more senior pilots push the bottom guys and girls into CR a couple of years from now? Hope it never happens for everyone’s sake.

Wanna bet?

A quote from AJ;

“The A380 is a crucial part of our long-haul fleet and this upgrade program will see customers enjoy everything the aircraft has to offer for years to come.”

Admittedly before Covid but a big call to write off the fleet with six newly refurbished aircraft done. Effectively a new aircraft with the latest cabin, IFE etc.
The A380 is a unique asset. QF doesn’t have any replacement in terms of capacity or cabin i.e. First Class!
Everyone else is parking their old ones so QF would be wise to keep these spiffy newly refurbed ones available to monopolise routes i.e. USA.
Pity they are just about to send off most of the A380 crew away with a golden hand shake??
Are you going to update your LOP Keg?

Possibly nominating a 3 year period for the A380 is really just another ‘smokescreen’ by the company. A RIN is still required for the B747(but much smaller one due to the offered VR plan). If they were also to add that the A380 would also be retired, the associated RIN or VR/ CR would become very expensive for the company! Post Covid, right aircraft for the right route will become paramount! We really don’t know what aviation will be like in 6 months , so announcing 3 years is very suspect.

I'd love to follow that advice, as I would be keen to take on any trickle of work and don't need the generous certainty that LWOP offers
However, with the sword of Damocles rising higher and higher up the seniority ladder with every other SO that takes LWOP, I feel most of us post 2016 graduates have only one certain choice.

A “couple of years from now” is unpredictable. Worldwide some airliners remained in storage for up to 9 years post GFC before being reactivated. It’s complex enough now to plan a RIN, but for the next 3 years when no one knows what will happen? Management have indicated that stand downs will continue whilst the fleet is stood down. As long as they are not retiring aircraft, like what was announced with the 747, then nothing changes from the forecast that has provided 190 pilots in surplus (that is the forecast til mid 2022).

Something that will have to be considered is the fact whilst pilots on long term stand down will probably return to flying, after having spent several years off coming back to flying won’t just be a matter of a few sims and off they go. The retraining will be extensive, and not just for individuals, we’re talking about entire fleets of pilots including instructors who haven’t been operational for a considerable length of time.

You would guess that a return to “normal” traffic would be slow and incremental though, so a fleet-wide recency problem should be manageable given enough forethought.

I am not reading anything currently that suggests a robust travel recovery absent a vaccine, even if immunisation is something that may have to be boosted periodically. I fear that we haven’t seen the entire SarsCoV-2 bag of tricks quite yet.

Any RIN is fairly irrelevant at this time, as it will only occur on paper.

I suspect that QF will have to write the cost of the A380 upper deck upgrade as a badly timed investment. This virus has such a stranglehold throughout the world that it can’t be contained until a vaccine is released and thus, any international traffic for the next few years will be a fraction of the 2019 level and will be “point to point”. This means that aircraft such as the B787, A350, A330NEO & even the A321XLR will be the most suitable types. Working against the A380 coming back into service is the fact that it was designed as a “hub to hub” aircraft, it has a very high fuel consumption, extremely high maintenance costs and the loads/fares won’t be high enough to offset these issues.

There was an article recently detailing the amount of work that A380’s require whilst in storage (mainly focussed on the SQ A380’s in Alice Springs but detailed the manufacturer’s requirements) and it is very significant. If all 12 QF A380’s get parked in Victorville, then there would be sufficient full time work for at least two of the LAX based engineers (relocate or have a lengthy commute each day). It would be worth monitoring if this ongoing maintenance is being performed because, if it stops, it signals that management have made the decision not to bring them back into service. Another scenario is that they may only maintain the aircraft that have had the recent upgrade.

In Oz, aircraft are written off over 12 years so, the early delivered aircraft would now have no value on the company books and, as we’ve known for a long time, there is zero market for second hand A380’s. For the remaining aircraft in the fleet there would be some residual book value which could be used by Joyce to increase the company’s FY loss (may be delayed a year or two to get the best timing) and then orchestrate a second miraculous turnaround - imagine the bonus he could reward himself for doing that.

cynphil - I totally agree.

Bodie 1 - do you still want to make a bet?

Yes,

Willing to put money in escrow.

I'm making this bet based on the fact that the aviation industry is entirely irrational. (I can back that up by research).

Irrational is a great word. That is exactly the view senior management and many other segments of the airline have on our working conditions. Never say never but the A380 is finished or at least the sky gods that fly them will never fly them again under our current award conditions. The restructuring will cost 1 billion and investors are already on board and happy to spend that money on getting rid of unnecessary staff and aircraft. There will be no turning back. The airline will be much smaller on the other side. The sky gods should just be grateful for extracting years out of what has been an unbelievable gravy train.

Has anyone actually met one of these sky gods?

Why would QF pay millions of dollars to dust off the A380 in three years? Its' a white elephant now, let alone in a world where other airlines will be backing out of they A350 purchase contracts left & right. It's dead, it just doesn't know it yet. The 350-900 & 1000 is a superior choice in every way.

Do you have any source for "apparently"?

Two minutes on the internet shows the opposite to be the case. Alice Springs is much less humid than Mojave.

https://weather-and-climate.com/aver...tes-of-America

https://weather-and-climate.com/aver...ings,Australia

I guess you can thank AJs predecessor for not buying the trippler

You are now left with valueless junk & pissed another $500 million up against the wall on upgrade

Strange how QF still persist with the line "couldn't make a 777 work"

Tough times no doubt - QF do not have an international business , but it "might" commence 12 months from now

Joiners from 2016 onward ihmo should stop listening to living legends on pprune who have decades on seniority & take LWOP

CRs are coming to the QF pilot group and the number will be in four figures - really just similar % to Kiwis/ BA / AirCan

They have moisture in Alice Springs? :}

Or people should realise Australia isn’t in the same situation because a legal provision to stand down employees exists here, whereas it doesn’t in many other countries.

There’ll be no more than 190 positions in surplus if no firm fleet changes are announced. Those numbers are based on the forecast of what will be needed in mid 2022.

So you reckon that more than one thousand LH for CR. That’s pushing into well into LH FO territory.

Gonna be expensive...:eek:

Yes they do YRP, prob 80 VB.

Even higher when you consider every LH SO will apply for LWOP and thus be passed over for CR. :)

About one third wouldn't it be (& that would be inclusive of the inevitable SH redundancies)

Do you really think QF is going to start CR LH guys from over a decade ago while SH FOs who have
been around for five minutes are "protected" & retain their jobs

Not gonna happen , there is one seniority list & there is a surplus in both divisions now

Man this is awesome, I'll take a bet on this as well.

"We'll all be rooned" said Hanrahan.

I've lost my flying job, career path has been severely mis-directed and yet I know this will pass, the world will re-bound and dare I say it, Qantas WILL hire pilots in the future. The only threat to all of this are the inbreeds that swear the world is ending.

I can't say whether there will be 380s flying again but I suspect if they do fly, it will only be the re-configured aircraft.

Also, considering the hundreds of engineering staff to be made redundant, the capability to service a full fleet will also be diminished. Sydney I hear are losing 300 from engineering and over 600 in total across the group.

Just what every other Airline in the world is doing

Why is Qantas any exception ?

You don't do any international flying atm & domestic is tiny

Do you actually believe all this "Australian exceptionalism" BS that gets promulgated by the Aussie media and talk feast brigade

That we are something special and have the best Universities ,national airlines, beaches , places to live ,pilots & for that matter everything else in the world ?

That we are "above" the outside world & what happens there - well that just has no relevance to us

Out from me

If you are directing that me? People love outrage, disaster. The media and lefttards have now created that for anybody who wants to participate. A bit of rational and critical thinking is now required. The AFR reports that 38 billion that was spent on overseas tourism is now out of the question, I'd love to see how business adapts to the current situation and ensures that money gets spent in this country. But if you or anyone else wants to fixate on disaster and outrage, go for it. Unfortunately, life goes on.