Qantas subsidiary pilots and engineers claim recruitment and local safety concerns

There was plenty of public relations fluff and many distractions surrounding Qantas’ half-yearly results announcement last Thursday as the airline resumed its industrial battle with pilots, who have resumed striking, at its Perth-based subsidiary Network Aviation. Despite the airline’s spin, there are growing concerns by pilots, engineers and regulators about safety.

The spin was Qantas pulling out special deals for frequent flyers, a long overdue ramping up of free wi-fi (but only on international flights) and plenty of pretty pictures of the A220, the newest airliner in the fleet that is replacing the ancient B717. But what Qantas did not mention is that it is increasingly using lower-paid QantasLink pilots on capital city routes — as it is already doing with Network Aviation — and will do more with this aircraft. Brisbane-Melbourne is one of its first routes. 

The huge financial results information dump also allowed the carrier to make only passing reference to the fact its “hero” aircraft, a specially designed-for-Qantas A350 for former CEO Alan Joyce’s vanity “Sunrise” project originally due late this year, will be six months late.

Multiple company sources told Crikey that the aircraft is unlikely to come into service until 2027 if all goes to plan. This would only be two years before rival United Airlines is due to begin the revival of supersonic flights that operate at twice the speed of normal aircraft, leaving a 17-hour schlep on Qantas in the shade. American Airlines has now placed an even larger order for supersonic planes from manufacturer Boom.

The bespoke A350’s biggest problem is a safety issue: the extra fuel tank it needs to travel from Sydney-London-New York-Paris nonstop. Concerns over this tank’s position in the plane’s underbelly (very similar to the Concorde’s) were dramatically elevated by the immolation of a Japan Airline A350 in Tokyo recently. That event also put on public display the terrifying speed at which the aircrafts’ latest composite material burns, leaving firefighters fleeing as soon as passengers were off for fear of inhaling life-threatening chemicals.

Experts and regulators have been highly concerned about the human and physical fallout from any fire on these aircraft. This has seen Airbus commit to redesigning the tank. Airbus had also faced delays in its A321XLR long-range narrow-body jets, also on order for Qantas, after concerns were raised with regulators that a new type of fuel tank could pose fire risks. 

The delays to the A350 and the smaller, single-aisle A321XLR that have been ordered to replace the 737 fleet, which is already an average of almost 16 years old, are also compounding Qantas’ problems with its maintenance division. Older planes — like cars and people — need more and more regular maintenance.

Qantas aviation engineers who spoke to Crikey said that there is a dwindling pool of potential recruits due to a fast ageing employee pool and decades of neglect in training — a problem afflicting the entire Australian airline sector.

“There are not enough experienced qualified engineers on the market,” a senior Qantas engineer told Crikey.

“So it doesn’t matter who they want to give the work to, everyone is short staffed and the amount of people hitting retirement age in the next five years is also a concern. You can’t keep relying on people in their 60s and 70s to get you by.”

The source said multiple retired or elderly engineers took redundancy packages and are now back working for smaller airlines at the international terminals.

“That gets them out of a hole now, but these blokes are getting old,” they said.

“The whole industry needs to spend big on apprenticeships if they don’t want to find themselves with no one left in the future.”

More insight into Qantas’ attitude towards safety emerged yesterday when ​the District Court of NSW made a $21,000 compensation order for a Qantas health and safety representative unlawfully stood down at the start of the pandemic. The Transport Workers Union says the order marks a historic win for workers’ rights and safety advocacy.

Safety concerns are also a central part of the stoush between Qantas management and its pilots in the west — the Network Aviation strike continues until Friday and then starts again on Monday. It has thrown Qantas’ east coast operations into chaos. 

“For some time now the level of confidence the pilot group has in their local management in Western Australia has been very low, especially in relation to their governance and oversight of safety-related matters,” said senior industrial officer Chris Aikens in a statement. One of the key safety issues is the Fatigue Risk Management System, which, pilots tell Crikey, is not being utilised properly. 

Each airline operator has a Fatigue Safety Action Group as represented by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the world’s peak rule-setting aviation body. Pilots say that concerns being raised are not being taken seriously by management if they have “any impact on operations” and that the system is not being used maturely. Qantas did not respond to questions about network safety concerns.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is now involved, and a spokesperson told Crikey: “We have received information from the union on this matter which we are currently working through. We encourage all pilots to use appropriate channels for reporting of safety incidents and occurrences, including those concerning fatigue. This can be to the operator, CASA or the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).”