Sure.....but it would be easier to send that message if the other East Coast Link operators hadn't caved and bent over.

Haha, very true.

Have the company come back with any form of response to the latest (of 3) no vote?

Give them a chance - management are still emerging from their Christmas hibernation. Nothing of substance happens anywhere until after 26th January.

What other East Coast operators? Seems operations that are fully Qantas owned were the only ones sent to do large numbers of flights, Alliance did a massive 1 flight! You can't have a crack at other operations pilots who have zero choice on what they are rostered to do or called out to do. Especially when Network had it's own pilots working RDOs to cover.

You guys are running a nice consistent line. The message is clear. From the inside I imagine it feels like a big deal. From the outside it looks like a measured and consistent approach, nothing crazy just a consistent message. No big deal, just a system working as intended.

Not my point , BO0M.
I'm just saying that Qantas Link and Qantas mainline managers need a strong wake-up call from the all the folks who actually do the real work.

Network Aviation currently recruiting outside the minimum requirements. Sub 1000 hour SEA drivers and no ATPL theory credit held.

Thoughts on the impact this will have on bargaining?

Hard to say. No one has ever accused them of behaving rationally so it possibly won’t be the expected reaction. Captains might start taking personal leave more regularly as a means of risk mitigation, but that will most likely only affect the travelling public as the company will divert resources accordingly to protect charters. Maybe more consequentially CASA might say they need to bump the experience level up a few notches and that can’t be done on the cheap. I don’t really see that happening, though, unless there is an exodus from the left seat (not impossible).

I’d say the biggest motivator the company has is that their clients are starting to get a bit twitchy and want this resolved yesterday, which is significant considering how much Pilbara transport matters to the Australian economy.

How many mining charter flights are Network doing per week? Is that number forecast to increase or decrease?
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It’s about to increase with a new contract they’ve just secured and the 319 arriving.

100-110 returns (not sure how consistent that is but that seems like a pretty normal number), mostly on the 320. Not sure whether those numbers will change but lots of 319s on the way would suggest they will go up

On that we both agree but your comment was pretty clear about east coast operations. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on the intial comment becasue forums and written word isn't nuanced, but until Network has nobody on the inside working RDOs to make the point they can't point fingers elsewhere.

Believe it or not the flights that were performed by east coast operators were apparently hard enough to crew as people were suddenly unwell. All pilots in OZ support (should) what's going on with Network and the pilots fight for better wages but Oz as a whole won't improve if ALL pilots don't quickly realise the fight is with companies not fellow workers.

so about 30 flights a day that QF can’t really muck around with without running the risk of losing valuable business. They’ll have fun trying to crew them from other group airlines that’s for sure. From a business point of view you are as valuable if not more than any other QF pilot group at the moment.

They don’t even have to do the strike action.

Just notify Fairwork that they plan to, wait for QF to move a bunch of mitigating assets (airframes and crew) to the west coast in the days prior - and then cancel the industrial action the night before.

They’ve played groups against each other for so long now - perhaps it’s time the AFAP played the same game.

You’re assuming they’re going to be able to crew them.

From the cheap seats, that appears impossible unless they start reading the room and stop offering an agreement where people who work overtime only get half pay 😂

Any potential applicants to NAA are putting the final nail in their mainline aspirations. Internal group airlines are a career dead end. Better off going to Rex or a GA company for a few years and then joining mainline.

I think the impact on safety is much more important. Watch the contracts get cancelled en masse when this 750 hour experiment ends with a bent airframe.

Of course the scariest form of PIA for management doesn’t necessarily include strike action. Rejection of and defects/deferrals, rejection of any extension beyond originally rostered duty, rejection of any duty change, no tankering, no reduced thrust takeoff, rejection of visual approaches and/or track shortening…..the list goes on. All we need is for the AFAP to mount up and bring these IR thugs down a notch.

Keep going guys!

Not even on their radar. To them safety and industrial issues have no overlap. If it’s approved by the regulator it will be good enough for them (and if it’s good enough for them it will get approved by the regulator).

BO0M, I wasn't talking about the friggin' strike!
FFS, to put it plainly, I would have hoped all Q subsidiaries kept voting NO until these bloated pricks realise our worth.

Mining companies don’t work like that. They have their own independent safety advisors who will set the standards.

CASA and the ATSB (very conveniently) separate what they perceive to be industrial issues from safety issues too, even when they are intimately entwined. If mining companies see it differently, then QF have some work to do if they want to keep these money spinner contracts.

That's just plain bullcrap. A steady stream of pilots is moving across to mainline from Network regularly. Why do you think people should join Rex or go to a GA company for even less money and worse conditions than the ones you reckon are so bad at Network?