Would I be right in saying the plan behind closed doors is to gradually reduce mainline flying over the coming decades and replace with subsidiaries?
That's exactly the aim. It's a classic race to the bottom, 'cos anyone who can move to a better job overseas will jump as soon a the opportunity arises.
That’s the theory many (most) have. In many ways the process commenced long ago. They are having issues crewing the A220 because a large number of the 717 crew have or will be going elsewhere (out of the group with many pursuing oppourtunites overseas) and many leave with a bitter taste in their mouth and would unlikely return in the future even if the deal of the century was offered.
The 'group' is in name only. There is no opportunity beyond your own component. For instance a Dash 8 pilot who wants to go the the 717 has to resign, and hopefully be rehired by the next entity. But, if they're going to resign anyway, why not search out greener pastures. The only two parts people actually want to get to are Jetstar and mainline, and the company is working hard to make them less attractive too.
I asked someone who roams at the higher levels about integrating the award (it was done in the 90’s with Australian Airlines) and his response was something along the lines of sounds like a good idea but can’t or won’t happen for a variety of reasons.
It was, and it wasn't.
All of the TAA pilots had seniority dates of 1989. Whilst some had been in the airline prior to that, the vast majority were new hires at that point. Qantas had no involvement in the '89 dispute, and so the QF seniority list was unbroken back to Noah.
A purely datal merge of the lists would have put the TAA people into the bottom 25%, so most wouldn't have been senior enough to get to their current positions. Basically they were senior enough to be SOs.
Their idea was that they should be able to push in from the top, taking every third position....starting at #3. The effect of that would have been that most of the QF people would have lost their slots (for instance I'd have been pushed out of my 767 command, which would have gone to someone who wasn't even in the company a few years ago).
Neither idea was even slightly tenable.
So, the eventual solution was that the two parts would be isolated from each other, with QF people coming in below the TAA for the domestic ops, and the reverse for international. There was then a formula for how the slots were to be allocated for new aircraft. For anyone joining after the merge, they were below everyone anyway. Basically each part kept what they had, and neither were advantaged to the detriment of the other. As time went by, those above the merge date left/retired. I don't think that there would be all that many left now, who predated the merge.
Jetstar does have some 'ghost' seniority numbers within mainline, but they too are largely washing out. Given that they have enjoyed vastly superior promotion over mainline, with command coming up in a small fraction of the time that mainline FOs had to wait, any attempt to bring them in at anything other than datal would result in a war.
You can see how this goes on. Each and every entity produces new permutations and problems.
The same fellow acknowledged the serious issues they are facing both currently and certainly in the coming years. The seniority list is very top heavy in the next 5-7 years with retirements and they have no idea how to re-balance the numbers let alone increase them.
How can it be top heavy, given that they lost a huge part of the pilot group in both 2014 and 2020?
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