Qantas short-haul agreement clears air for Sunrise talks

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December 23, 2019
Qantas
Qantas A350 Image: Qantas

Project Sunrise may be a step closer after Qantas recently reached an in-principle industrial agreement with its short-haul pilots.

The in-principle enterprise agreement (EBA), reached after almost 18 months of talks, still must be endorsed by members of the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) and is expected to go to a vote in January.

The airline confirmed Monday that it had reached an in-principle agreement with AIPA for its short-haul pilots, contrasting it with the stand-off it has with Jetstar pilots.

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“The agreement includes 3 percent annual wage increases and better protections against disruptions to their rosters,’’ the airline said in a statement.

“The proposed agreement will go to a vote in January and is within the group-wide approach to pay negotiations.

“This demonstrates we are prepared to reach new agreements which reward our people and ensures the ongoing competitiveness of our business.”

The agreement clears the way for AIPA to concentrate on a separate long-haul agreement and deal with changes the airline says it needs to make the Project Sunrise business case viable.

Sunrise aims to give Qantas hub-busting, non-stop flights from eastern Australia to New York, London and potentially other destinations.

The Flying Kangaroo has selected a slightly modified version of the Airbus A350-1000 to perform the mission and Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority has indicated it is prepared to make the regulatory changes to allow the longer flights.

The airline needs to confirm production slots for the A350s by March and says the last hurdle to the business case is a long-haul agreement with productivity improvements from pilots.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has warned repeatedly that the airline will not proceed with the project unless the business case, including the long-haul pilot agreement, stacks up.

The in-principle agreement helps clear the air for the long-haul negotiations, which have also been made simpler by the aircraft selection.

However, AIPA has emphasized that there are still issues that need to be addressed about Project Sunrise in the long-haul talks.

It remains optimistic it can reach an agreement and hopes it can negotiate around some of the management demands pilots are not prepared to accept as well as concerns about fatigue risk management.

“We did so four years ago with the business case around the 787 and in that process, we negotiated a 30 percent productivity increase,’’ AIPA long-haul negotiator Captain Adam Susz recently told AirlineRatings.

“We were expecting that would be the basis to move forward with Sunrise.

“However, it seems that Qantas is seeking more again, which we regard as a double hit.

“And the pilots have told us that they don’t wish to extend any further than we did four years ago, especially when the Sunrise tours of duty are in excess of 22 or 23 hours on a planned basis.”

On the fatigue issue, the pilots are unhappy with the way CASA is dealing with the flights.

Susz said the new routes would see pilots at the controls for longer and there was a need to be careful as the frontier of commercial aviation was extended.

AIPA expects New York to Sydney to be about a 21-hour duty, for example, while Sydney to London will be close to 22 hours.

This was on a planned basis without taking into factors such as congestion and bad weather, Susz noted.

“These flights are untested,’’ he said. “We haven’t seen commercial flights of this length before so we need to have conversations with CASA.

“So far the regulator hasn’t engaged with pilots effectively and we’re concerned about some of the rules — or lack of rules — that will apply to the ultra-long-range operations.

“So there’s more to it than just salary and wages.”

What pilots wanted, Susz said, was leadership and guidance from CASA based on sound scientific evidence of what was safe.

“Just simply to say ‘We don’t see a problem’ is not really good enough when you’re talking the length of flights Qantas is proposing to do,’’ he added.

“So we’re looking for a bit more meat on the bone.”

Qantas has been giving CASA long-term data from its Perth-London non-stop flights and will add to that data it gained during recent non-stop delivery flights on the London and New York to Sydney routes.

Susz acknowledged that the data gathering had been taking place but said the pilots had yet to see the results of the studies.

“We’re looking forward to seeing what this is but we just hope that the outcome is not reverse engineered to allow Qantas to operate unfettered into the 23- and 24-hour tours of duty without proper fatigue measures in place,’’ he said.

Another point of contention is a “B scale” for new hires.

Singapore Airlines operates ultra-long-haul flights between Singapore and New York but Susz noted it flew with a “heavy “ crew of two captains and two first officers.

Qantas until recently had been proposing to use one captain, one first officer and two second officers.

This was made worse by the fact the airline wanted to bring new second officers in at about half the pay of their current counterparts, he said.

“The pilots have told us unequivocally that they won’t agree to that,’’ he added.

A veteran of four EBA negotiations when the latest is counted,  Susz said other issues related to minor work rules and pay and conditions “which are not insurmountable”.

He said there was an option for Qantas to agree to a new enterprise agreement without the A350 being involved and revisit the question in two to three years.

However, the airline’s position had been it was not willing to negotiate a deal without Sunrise included, leading to concerns pilots could be used as an excuse for not proceeding with the project.

“So we’ve been negotiating on that basis,’’ he said. “They’ve now taken the position that they can’t order these planes unless they have the pilots’ terms and conditions agreed which I find frustrating because pilots’ costs make up such a small percentage of the overall operation.”

AIPA is prepared to accept multi-variant flying, which involves A330 pilots being trained to fly both the existing and the new aircraft, but Susz noted there were challenges in areas such as recurrent training.

“You need to do simulator training on both types on a regular basis, so there’s that to consider,’’ he said.

He added that multi-variant flying had been around for some time and while the A330 and the A350 were a generation apart, in many ways the aircraft were similar.

“Cathay has been doing for a little while and Finnair has been doing it so there is some operational experience out there and we’ve been talking to the pilots from those carriers to learn from their experiences,’’ he said

“One of the things we’ve learnt is it does take some time; it takes a good six to 12 months to really get comfortable swapping between the two aircraft types.

“But it can be done and there’s quite a benefit to the airline having one crew of pilots flying two different variants so there are some synergies and productivity just in that alone.”