Unfortunately, what would VR do for the company? Cost them more than stand down and leave them short of pilots when the borders open.

My response was with respect to compulsory redundancy.

Apologies - I misunderstood.

I am not talkimg CR, it may cost the Company more to offer some VR to the pilots looking at a 3 year Stand Down, my point is that it is bordering on inhumane to keep these guys ‘attached’ if they dont want to be just to force them back after a 3 year stand down. If the Company offered VR and people take it then great, if no one takes ot then they are happy to remain. Doing the right thing can cost some money sometimes.

Whats the difference between what QF have done and what often happens in the US with furloughs?

Stand down is probably a bit better than furlough because at least people are accruing AL and LSL along the way. Not sure if furlough has that benefit.

That said, I don’t reckon stand down was ever intended for this sort of ongoing situation, or a situation where parts of the company have work and other parts of the company have zero.

I suspect stand downs on the A380 is going to be a sad fact of life whilst other LH fleets still have rolling stand downs (due to international border closures). My personal opinion is that once borders are open and other LH fleets are back flying then the lack of A380 flying looks more like a commercial decision and stand down becomes very hard to justify. I suspect QF know this and are trying to work out how they solve that problem in about 12 months time.

Another sad fact is that, statistically at least, a few stood down crew will develop a career limiting medical issue with zero access to sick leave. I think the company is banking on this and I think that is unconscionable.

The worrying part of this is there is no desire to test the legality of this. The AIPA don’t seem to want to ask the hard questions, and if they won’t fight for the pilot group, who will?

How can the company use rotating stand ups? There either is useful work or there isn’t. If there isn’t ENOUGH useful work - you have too many staff and should follow the EBA process to resolve that. Too expensive? Might need them shortly? Then pay a minimum retainer - as per the EBA.

We should be pushing harder to have everyone stood up. Don’t tell me they can’t do it - govt assistance package plus domestic capacity means they have the resources.

So it’s viable to run A380’s domestically just so that every pilot can fly a few times a month?

I’m not sure your investors would agree with that when it’s losing them more money.

A couple of questions re A380 pilots.
 

These are genuine questions, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I do feel for all of the guys/girls in this predicament.

How many of the A380 pilots will be approaching 65 within the next 12-24 months?

What happens then? Forced retirement?

Where do they stand then for bidding to the SH? (Pending any vacancies of course)

Ie: can you bid while “stood down”

Of the <65 group, are there any positions for them to bid to?

If you are late in your ‘50’s and a F/O, is there enough time for you to find a left seat before you retire?

What of the S/O’s? They must be looking at a long stay on the sidelines?

How long can they be on LWOP for before?

What happens at the end of the LWOP?

Now, if they retire the aircraft, then all these problems become the company’s problem through the RIN process, so it would appear that will be an option QF won’t want to take.

All the best to everyone in this predicament, a terrible situation. Take care of yourselves and your families, and we are all hoping for smooth skies in the not to distant future.

Maybe they have, albeit not through the courts. There are plenty of CoM members who are stood-down 380 Pilots. I'd be very surprised if they are not exploring every possible avenue you see all Longhaul Pilots stood-up, including themselves.

This merry go-round we escaped lots of furloughs in the states by extended leaves offered and early retirements. REGARDLESS, in all instances seniority was not infringed.

The policy of forced stand downs is a genie you won’t get back in the bottle. It’ll prob be used for the next crisis and the one after that.

Have you spoken to AIPA about the legal advice they’ve obtained? Last year and again this year that advice is unchanged. You’re suggesting AIPA launch a costly court case contrary to legal advice to ‘test’ the stand down?

You’re suggesting that from April last year we should have RIN’d all the A380 and 747 pilots to the A330 and 787, most of the Captains on those latter fleets to F/O and probably all of the F/Os back to S/O? Who does that help? The company? The pilots? None of the above?

On what grounds? The international borders are closed. There is no useful work for at least half of the A330 and 787 fleets and none at all for the A380. There will be a time when we will be able to push harder and it will be appropriate to do so. Unfortunately that time is still months away.

0. Though there are some LH pilots on other fleets approaching (and a couple beyond) 65.

If there is no SH vacancy to bid for, yes. (Under current rules).

If there is a vacancy they can bid for it. Whether a vacancy has to be created for them I thought was ruled on a bunch of years ago with the result being the company does not have to create a slot for them. Happy to be corrected on that point.

Most definitely. You’re stood down in category. It doesn’t stop you bidding. A better question would be can you bid whilst on LWOP. I’m not sure that latter question has been tested.

Not currently. There may be toward the end of this year depending on a few different things.

This would depend on seniority. There are a lot of ‘ifs’ to do with future promotion including how many A380s come back and what QF chooses to do with A380 crew in the interim. Most of the F/Os you mention are now a couple of hundred numbers more senior to what they were 12 months ago and some of them are likely to now have their commands a couple of years before they would have otherwise expected. In the past I would have listed out the exact fleet numbers to provide more context but can’t do that anymore. ‘Confidential company information’.

Again, this will depend on seniority and some of the aforementioned ‘ifs’. IF 12 A380s come back and IF we are looking at half a dozen (or more) A350s arriving in late 2023 then it’s likely that 2022-2023 will see the biggest training program every run by Qantas. Even if only 6 A380s come back, with the A350 coming down range we are still looking at a pretty significant training load.

As long as they like.

They come back to their previous category and are either stood up (if there is work) or remain stood down. They start to accrue years of service, AL, LSL again, etc.

If they retire the A380s it’ll likely be because they’ve chosen to replace the capacity with A350s. There will be airframes for the remaining A380 crew to RIN to.

Yes. A terrible predicament that is impacting crew in very different ways depending on the seat you happened to be in when the music stopped. Hopefully with vaccinations ramping up in the lead up to Christmas, once the election is done and dusted we will see international borders re-opening.

Seniority rules.....wait...not at Qantas.

On what grounds? The international borders are closed. There is no useful work for at least half of the A330 and 787 fleets and none at all for the A380. There will be a time when we will be able to push harder and it will be appropriate to do so. Unfortunately that time is still months away.[/QUOTE]

That’s the unfortunate reality at the moment like it or not.

It’s interesting reading this,

”Mr Joyce said that capability included keeping on enough A380 pilots to operate at least six A380s at relatively short notice.”

I don’t think that is the intent of the stand down clause?

can you give an example? Not happy with sharing standup? Not happy with rostering? Not happy you’re senior to someone on another fleet but not flying? Some context please....as far as I’ve seen, seniority is ruling,

Yes, I wonder the same thing. One wonders how a QF32 type event and subsequent fleet grounding may be treated in the future compared to how it was in the past.

Was it ever an absolute?

If strict seniority was to be have been applied at the start of COVID then immediately the top roughly 500 pilots would’ve been retrained as mostly 737 pilots with a few 330 and 787 drivers as well, and the rest made redundant. That would’ve satisfied crewing numbers for the whole of last year, and then as more crew start to to be needed this year they are re-employed from #500 onwards.

If no seniority at all was applied then all 380 and 747 pilots from every rank would’ve been made redundant a few months into Covid. Maybe apply for their jobs back in 3 years time but no earlier.

The application of seniority to whatever degree is going to make some happy and some unhappy.

and everyone who is currently stood down would have a couple hundred grand redundancy payout in their pocket while they wait to be rehired.

Not necessarily.

If Strict Seniority CR was applied then everyone who started in the last few years would have no more than a few weeks pay. So for a lot it would be better to collect AL on stand down.

If you are redundant then you are outside of the system and any possible chances that come up in that time. Yes, you’ll be rehired but only when overall it’s deemed necessary and miss out on any opportunities until then. For example there was no recruitment between 2009-16 but plenty of promotions and transfers that occurred within the pilots who were employed. They managed those slots with the numbers they had at the time.

And it sounds great if redundancies were paid out to all crew but it would risk the overall financial position of the company and put a lot of other workers at risk. Income is still tight out there although there is hope on the horizon.

Yeah it sucks but there really isn’t a option which is going to satisfy everyone.

They are a publicly traded company - they may be an 'icon' in many people's minds but they are, legally and in fact, a publicly traded company with shareholders who consider their funds they've invested in shares not as a 'gift' or 'donation' but as an investment with the expectation of a return.

Qantas' activities happen to be providing air transportation to people and goods but it is ALL for the purpose of providing a return on capital invested. It's as simple as that. Effective 31st July, 1995.

Nope. They’d still be stood down, and the company would be broke from multiple training courses both ways. We would have killed the goose that lays the golden egg each fortnight.

I’ve said a number of times that surviving Covid was about trying to find the ‘least crap’ outcome for the most number of people. So far I reckon we’ve gone pretty well to achieve that. I acknowledge that the ‘least crap’ outcome varies significantly between different segments of the mainline pilot group.

Not even close to reality.

As I hear it went nowhere because QF kept asking for things that wouldn’t get more people back to work sooner, like removing MDC from certain duties to go along with the reduction in MGH that they wouldn’t committ to undoing when the world got back to normal. Seems like it was a conditions grab, designed to look like they cared.

That’s a long way from the version I’ve heard. It’s true that QF suggested some things that made their life easier during Covid such as reduced bidding timelines and other things like that. The things I heard discussed all had an end date though so it wasn’t a ‘conditions grab’ in the traditional sense that a line pilot might see it. I hadn’t heard about the ‘wouldn’t commit to undoing’ regarding reduced MDC but I’ll do some digging. Keep in mind that any variation still needed to be voted up so any ‘grab’ that jeopardised a ‘yes’ vote was short sighted in the extreme.

There are a few different reasons why EA variations are not being discussed in any depth any more. I’m happy to talk through them over the phone if people want to give me a call.

I get what you’re saying but you are forgetting that LWOP was taken up by the junior pilots who were told they would most likely be bypassed for CR if they did so.

So most of the people who would actually be CRed would be more senior and probably get a couple of hundred grand at least.

Like the ensuing bankruptcy from the 747 RIN training courses?

the CRed pilots would probably be SO’s. The most likely short term outcome from a mass CR would be a bit of heavy crewing, not bankruptcy from training courses. You know that, so does Qantas. Keeping us all stood down is really really cheap. That’s why they’re doing it.

Can the company make someone compulsory redundant if there is a legal stand down trigger?

That’s 60 odd Captain/ F/O courses onto fleets that are likely to need those crew in the next six months (post VR/ER, it would have been a heap more prior to that process). It’s a very different set of circumstances to the RIN example Dre was talking about of doing a mass RIN at the beginning of Covid of everyone on the A380 (110 courses post VR), then everyone on the 747 (60 courses), then dealing with the surplus on the 787, then dealing with the resulting surplus on the A330. Conservatively I reckon we’re up to 400 training courses.

Oh, and now we’d be training in the reverse order again to re-promote people for the increased flying having probably not even got everyone into the correct seats to start off with.

In a fair world perhaps some kind of “no worse off” could have applied. Given the 330 and 787 crews probably only had two or three months in the last 14 why not just pay the 747 and 380 guys the same. That way everyone would be in the same boat, and no training required.

Will those training onto the 330/787 at present simply check to line and then get stood down?

Seems like QF might be jumping the gun a bit, but hopefully I’m wrong!

Thank you for your answers Keg👍

It appears that international travel will take some time to recover:
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-...26-p57vdq.html

Qantas can run a RIN, and move crew to where there is work without displacing anyone in a subsequent RIN.
The Bump that Keg assumes only happens after crew move and IF Qantas choose to then run a subsequent RIN.Nothing to stop QF carrying a surplus and avoiding the bump.TRE’s saying training is at max in SH and on some LH fleets from prior vacancies so cost of training can’t be an argument.
with the dismal failure of a government plan on vaccines Qantas may be in this position for many years to come.
A330s are flying domestically and to Asia(Freight).The 787s are flying a lot of repat flights and now domestic/freight.Most of which are paid by the government.
There is not a total “stoppage of work” so the “borders closed” argument is not stopping work entirely. LH crew have useful work and are flying now it is just limited.The argument many have is false as it assumes border closes=no useful work for anyone
Stand down will have a limited timeframe and Qantas shareholder responsibility doesn’t over ride law.

Unfortunately, the Long Haul EA does not specify that a pilot can be only be stood down for a 'total' "stoppage of work". The words in clause 15.6 refer to a 'strike, stoppage or other limitation of work for which the company cannot be held responsible'. A 'limitation' does not require all work to cease. Moreover, the stand down can apply to individual pilots, it does not have to apply to all pilots, or an entire category of pilots; note the use of the words 'an Australian based pilot' and 'the pilot'. So a limitation that only affects the work for a handful of employees can result in partial stand downs of a group of pilots.

Regarding running a RIN and then Qantas carrying the surplus, this is an important point. While the RIN process is specified in the Agreement, it does not state that he Company has to conduct a RIN. The 'right thing' to do for pilots might be to RIN A380 pilots to other long haul types that are flying. However, if there is cost involved, there may be pressure from within the business to carry the surplus on the A380 and not RIN anyone. If you were a cynic, you might conclude that Qantas may be motivated to talk about A380s coming back into service as it affects the ability to stand down pilots on that type.

Qantas runs a RIN because a category is in surplus. With only 40 A380 Captains and plans for at least 6 A380s to return (and Joyce keeps talking about all 12) one needs to ask whether the A380 categories fit the definition of being in surplus. That’s an argument that can go either way depending on a bunch of legal definitions. That is a discussion that is well above my pay grade. I have an opinion on the matter but am often reminded that it’s just my opinion.

However let’s consider your justification for a RIN. You’re suggesting we do a RIN of the A380 category (presumably because you feel them in surplus), have them displace to the A330 and 787 (where there is only currently enough flying for about 50% of the crew) but then NOT do a subsequent RIN on the A330 and 787? It seems a little odd to push a barrow to RIN one fleet due not enough flying for those pilots but then not follow that principle through to it’s logical conclusion on other LH fleets?

Interestingly, toward the end of last year it seemed there were quite advanced discussions and some plans to move crew from the non flying fleets onto the 330 and 787. Those discussions seem not to have progressed this year. Perhaps the real question A380 pilots should be asking is what happened to those ideas that were being discussed in the back half of last year.

This I agree with though I suspect we disagree on when that time frame comes around.

Keg

You are meant to be one of the union reps these days and all I hear you do is defend the company. Maybe they need defending, I dont know. I do think that probably it would be better if you represented the interests of pilots stood down for over 18 months now.

The A380 pilots dont have to ask any questions - your on the AIPA COM. You have been elected to ask those questions on their behalf.

The 'redundancies will send the company broke' trope needs to end - seriously.

All of QF HR stood up the whole time since COVID kicked off - many of them on over 100K per year.

Network fully stood up. EFA full stood up without a day off. JQ now fully stood up including their 787 pilots.

Dont worry, QF is making plenty of money and its certain exec bonuses will be paid FY 22 / 23.... seriously come on.

Your all off the mark.Qantas are going to have issues with extended stand down.

Qantas are running around 150 training courses from old vacancies.They should of cancelled the courses if they were in difficulty.
Why are they going ahead and training 150 pilots if they can’t afford it? You can’t have it both ways.
The argument doesn’t pass the pub test.

Not sure that’s correct.
Did they not have a 2/2 arrangement?