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Qantas launched a labor battle with pilots at its Perth subsidiary Network Aviation last Thursday, amid massive PR issues and a host of distractions surrounding the company’s release of its half-year results. Despite the airline’s poor performance, safety concerns are growing among pilots, engineers and regulators.
The drama is fueled by Qantas’ special offer for frequent fliers, the long-overdue addition of free Wi-Fi (but only on international flights) and plenty of pretty pictures of the A220, the newest airliner in the fleet set to replace the venerable B717 . But what Qantas failed to mention is that it is increasingly using lower-paid QantasLink pilots on capital city routes – as it already does with Network Aviation – and will use the aircraft to do more matter. Brisbane-Melbourne is one of its first routes.
The massive financial results information dump also left the airline with only passing mention of its “hero” aircraft, the Vanity Sunrise, which was launched at the end of the year specifically for former chief executive Alan Joyce The specially designed Qantas A350. Six months late.
Sources from multiple companies revealed crickey If all goes according to plan, the aircraft is unlikely to enter service before 2027. In two years’ time, rival United Airlines will begin resuming supersonic flights, which can fly at twice the speed of ordinary aircraft and eclipse Qantas’ 17-hour flight time. American Airlines has now placed a larger order for supersonic aircraft with manufacturer Boom.
The biggest problem with the customized A350 is safety: extra fuel tanks are needed for non-stop flights from Sydney-London-New York-Paris. The recent self-immolation of a Japan Airlines A350 aircraft in Tokyo has raised concerns about the location of the fuel tanks in the aircraft’s underbelly (very similar to Concorde). The incident also showed the public the horrific speed at which planes’ latest composite materials can burn, causing firefighters to flee as soon as passengers disembarked for fear of inhaling life-threatening chemicals.
Experts and regulators have been highly concerned about the impact of these aircraft fires on people and bodies. Airbus has committed to redesigning the tank. Airbus’s A321XLR long-range narrow-body jet, also on order for Qantas, is also facing delays due to regulators’ concerns about fire risks posed by new fuel tanks.
Delays in the A350s and the smaller single-aisle A321XLRs ordered to replace the 737 fleet, which has an average age of nearly 16 years, are also exacerbating problems at Qantas’ maintenance department. Older aircraft – like cars and people – require increasingly regular maintenance.
Qantas aviation engineers interviewed crickey It said potential recruits were shrinking due to a rapidly aging workforce and decades of neglect of training – a problem plaguing the entire Australian aviation industry.
“There are not enough experienced and qualified engineers on the market,” a senior Qantas engineer told us crickey.
“So it doesn’t matter who they want to give the job to, everyone is short-staffed and the number of people reaching retirement age in the next five years is also an issue. You can’t keep relying on people in their 60s and 70s to sustain you. .”
Sources said several retired or elderly engineers accepted the layoffs and are now back working for smaller airlines at the international terminal.
“It lets them off the hook now, but these guys are getting older,” they said.
“The industry as a whole needs to invest significantly in apprenticeships if it doesn’t want to find itself neglected in the future.”
Yesterday, the New South Wales District Court issued a $21,000 compensation order against a Qantas health and safety representative who illegally resigned at the beginning of the outbreak, providing further insight into Qantas’s attitude towards safety. The Transportation Workers Union said the order marked a historic victory for workers’ rights and safety initiatives.
Safety issues are also at the heart of the dispute between Qantas management and its pilots in the west – with the online strike continuing until Friday before starting again on Monday. This has thrown Qantas’ east coast operations into chaos.
Senior industry officer Chris Aikens said in a statement: “Confidence in local management in Western Australia has been low for some time among pilot groups, particularly around the governance and oversight of safety-related matters. .” One of the key safety issues is the fatigue management review system, pilots tell us crickeywas not utilized correctly.
Every airline operator has a Fatigue Safety Action Group, represented by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the world’s top aviation rule-making body. Pilots said management would not have taken the concerns raised seriously if they had “any impact on operations” and the system was not used maturely. Qantas did not respond to questions about cybersecurity concerns.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has now stepped in, a spokesman told crickey: “We have received information from the union regarding this matter and we are currently dealing with the issue. We encourage all pilots to use the appropriate channels to report safety incidents and incidents, including those related to fatigue. Reports can be made to the operator, CASA or the Australian Sent by ATSB.”
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