Interview- Alan Terrell

AT: We’re probably building up more experience in extended range operations than any other airline, basically because any time we fly any of our aeroplanes it operates under an extended-range standard. And that applies to the equipment on board and the serviceability standard before they are allowed to take off, plus the crew qualification in relation to the location of the nearest airport and of their equipment and what they would have to do if a piece of equipment failed in flight. At this stage every aeroplane even if it’s flying from Sydney to Melbourne, operates on the extended range criteria. When we first got the Boeing 767-200 we were operating under what was then the ICAO rule, that is 90 minutes cruise speed on twin engines from the nearest suitable airport. Which is the equivalent of 120 minutes on a single engine. The FAA then had a regulation called the 60 minute rule which meant that any aeroplane could be no more than 60 minutes at single engine speed from a suitable airport. Basically the Americans did not have any need to operate twin engined aeroplanes. They had a couple of operating across the Caribbean that took them to 75 minutes. It wasn’t until the long range twins like the 767 and the A300 appeared and demonstrated that reliability that the FAA decided to readdress the rule. And they got a lot of pressure, of course, from operators. What happened was that there was a sort of compromise that there always is in that the ICAO generalised standard was altered to bring it closer to the FAA standard so there is now a threshold criteria for any twin engined aeroplane – newly certificated I mean – that it has to meet this 60 minute standard and build up experience with both airframe and engine and combined airframe/engine and crew criteria. We were able to bring the older series -200 767s in under the ICAO rule and they started off with 120 minutes straight off. With the -300s we had to bring them in basically to the American criteria. Because that would have effectively prevented us from operating across the Tasman while we gained experience. We were able to negotiate a dispensation for 100 minutes, to which we are now operating those aeroplanes. This is enough time to fly Auckland/Sydney or Weilington and Christchurch/ Melbourne. We put the first aeroplane onto the Tasman and flew it two or three times a day across there. The second aeroplane we were able to introduce to Singapore and as we built up experience we brought in additional routes, but

still working to 100 minutes. We have applied for and we are very close to achieving 138 minutes for both times.

JS: Is that a practical figure, why for instance, 138 minutes?

AT: The 138 minutes enables us to get from Sydney to Tokyo only nominating Port Moresby and Guam as alternate airports – 135 was too little and 140 was more than necessary. Now the FAA, Boeing and Airbus are all moving to 180 minute criteria as we build up more experience and we had hoped to achieve FAA certification by the end of 1988, with Australian certification to follow a little later. But the FAA certification is probably about March so we will be looking at 180 minutes about June or July. That would give us Honolulu/Mainland, even though I don’t think we will schedule it at this stage. It does have other benefits for the crew in that they don’t have to continually monitor the airports they are flying over in relation to runways, notams, weather and the like. Actually 154 minutes would give that but the FAA has agreed they will go straight from 120 minutes to 180. This represents airframe reliability,engine reliability and airframe-engine-operations combined. So we could have an aeroplane certified for 180 minutes and sell it to another airline that didn’t have that experience and they would drop right back until they built up experience. We have GE engines on the -300s and that choice was purely on engine experience. We have Pratts on the -200s. The performance between them was so close as to be almost indistinguishable – the reliability and the rest of it. We thought Pratt & Whitney had a better development potential and history has shown that is true. But because their 4000 engine is newer and had not flown on too many aircraft – on twin engined aeroplanes -we settled for GE.

JS: Does the certification procedure also look at some of the engine ancillaries such as the APU and so on?

AT: Yes, all of those things are built in. There is a continued analysis every time we do an ER flight. We have to report any unserviceability

that occur and that applies to all systems. One of the requirements is to demonstrate the APU after a cold soak. The FAA does not require that but we do. For a long time they were highly susceptible. But now the APUs we have on the 767 seem to work very well. The certification is to start the APU at 41,000ft but in actual fact you probably wouldn’t do that because it’s not necessary. The initial thing is to shut equipment down and let it descend down to a stabilising attitude, starting the APU at about 30-35,000ft. We’ve had a couple of engine shutdowns, none of which has taken place in true ER situations. They’ve all been about 30 minutes from the airport of origin. We’ve had either one or two actual engine failures – the fuel control unit in one case and a sheared drive in another -the engine sensed a failure and shut down. But they occurred pretty early in the flight. They get measured as a statistic in ER analysis. But they probably help the statistics as we’ve always said if you have an engine failure, it will occur within half an hour of departure from the airport. Once you achieve cruise and altitude, everything is stable and you’re most unlikely to have something go wrong.

JS: Next, on training. On growth predictions, you will obviously have to recruit a significant number of pilots. How does the requirement break down in terms of replacing retirements and crewing new aircraft?

AT: We have got extensive training and recruitment necessary particularly in the pilot ranks. You will see recruitment over the next five years of up to 900 pilots. I’m not certain where we’re going to get them from. We’re convinced we will have to commence some form of pilot training scheme like we had 20 years ago. We won’t do it quite the same way but we will probably get young lads straight out of school and train them in a controlled environment. We want to teach them sufficiently to qualify them straight into Qantas from the end of their training programme rather than put them out into general industry. We don’t want to start up a school ourselves. We know both Ansell and British Aerospace and Hawker de Havilland are establishing training schools and both of them are talking to us. Both have offered us some equity and we could take them up on that. One or the other – or both if we decide. I would be surprised to see them both go ahead. Hawker seems to be further down the track. I don’t think Australia is big enough to cater for them both, even if you have an infrastructure coming in from neighbouring countries. Overall, we’re talking 130-140 pilots a year. We’ll still get some from he conventional sources but we’re looking at, say, 70 a year and it’s unlikely we’d send half to each of them. But it’s early days yet. But we’ve certainly taken a decision in principal to start pilot training. The other area when we’re talking about training is in the skilled trades. We’ve got a major problem in that regard. We’re hoping to go to the government right now about the difficulties we’re having in industrial shortages. That’s why we’re sending work overseas for maintenance which traditionally we’ve done ourselves. We’ve lost so many of our skilled people and have been unable to meet the growth requirement. We’re building a skills training centre just over the road, where that 7 4 7 fuselage is. Boeing gave it to us. They had it on the display during Canadian Expo and we convinced them to let us have it for skills training. That will be used for adult apprentices, practical apprentice training and also for skills training for the restructuring we’re going through. We’re putting 189 apprentices on right now and that compares with 150 over the past two years. But I think we spend far too much time teaching them skills which are not necessary in Qantas but which may be necessary generally in industry. We want some way of orienting apprentice training more to the Jet era than is conventionally understood.

JS: Boeing, British Aerospace and Are all skilling – reskilling workers. Boeing In particular is putting a huge effort into retraining people.

AT: Well that’s really the idea for our new centre. We will get an electrical fitter who:s worked in a garage or somewhere and train him in airframes with a practical course and a lot of practical work available to him. We would also hope to take people with sheet-metal skills and give them electrical skills as well. Not only do they do sheet metal work but they can also disconnect all the electrical fittings and reconnect them. It will be all done under supervision of a licensed. This will be done in house. One of our difficulties Is that the TAFE system has been allowed to run down. This year we were told by TAFE they could no longer take the new apprentices although they would continue to train the second and third year apprentices who had already been there but they couldn’t take any additional ones. I had a discussion in Canberra with ministers and some other people from industry and it’s not just a Sydney problem – it’s an Australian problem. There is just not the money available. We’ve been discussing how we can challenge the national problem or at least encourage people to address the national problem. We’re all right with graduate engineers. We don’t see a ,shortage yet, although I understand some industries do. We seem to be able to attract people. Perhaps there’s some mystique and prestige in working for Qantas. We have a good batch of engineers and also cadets. It’s mainly skilled and semi-skilled people we’re having the difficulties with.

JS; With bringing in these people with enhanced skills, it means you will have to restructure the way you approach the organisation of maintenance. You’ll be working more as groups under supervision. As a team. Disconnecting the electrics, for instance, then working on it and putting it all together.

AT: We don’t intend to lose the supervision side of it at all but get a broader base of individuals. The fundamental advantage is that you can pay them a bit more and become competitive with the local garage and a truck driver and all these other things that have been attracting people out to industry