Tired, Stressed and Underpaid: Is This Aviation’s ‘New Normal’?

Over the last few months, the industry has been forced to change before our very eyes. Some of these changes have raised questions about the long-term conditions faced by staff that remain in the industry. In this long form investigation, Hannah Dowling looks to the past to predict the future

In an industry that is so filled with passion and so fixated on productivity, the human factor cannot be overstated. The Australian aviation industry relies on a cohesive team of individuals, from pilots and cabin crew, to engineers and ground service workers, who work together to ensure that Australians can travel from A to B as safely and securely as possible. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, wreaked havoc on the aviation sector around the globe. Entire fleets are grounded, as demand for travel has fallen to unprecedented lows. So far in Australia, we’ve seen thousands of passionate workers lose their job or be stood down from their post, indefinitely. Those left still working are doing all they can to keep customers safe and comfortable, while seeing their wages slashed and hours extended, as airlines desperately attempt to rein in their cash burn. Recent media reports have also seen in-flight staff berated by frustrated passengers, as corporate cost-cutting measures begin to filter into the customer experience. The changes, while understandable from a business perspective, have raised serious questions about safety and security in the hands of overworked, underpaid and exhausted staff. 

“Workers who are tired, who are stressed, who have been given more responsibilities and less opportunity for rest, or a break, these are people who may just make mistakes,” says ex-Virgin cabin crew member Shaun Fuller. “And it’s such a testament to the strength of this industry that so far we haven’t seen any serious repercussions of any of this yet, but that doesn’t make it OK.” 

With such concerns now expressed, one has to wonder what the industry might eventually look like under the ‘new normal’. 

Fuller, who left the industry a number of years ago, tells Australian Aviation the story of his own experience, which similarly saw working conditions shift “overnight”, in a manner that was unsustainable. He was working as a cabin manager when, in 2010, John Borghetti made the decision to ramp up Virgin Australia’s market standing. 

“Before I left the industry, I saw a lot of burnout and sickness,” Fuller says. 

“When the decision was made that Virgin would become full-service, to compete directly with Qantas, things changed really, really quickly.” 

He explains the key differences between his experiences before and after Virgin’s transition. 

“When Virgin was more of a budget carrier, there were no complimentary food or drinks. You had the option to buy them if you so wished, but for most flights, two hours or less, mostly people wouldn’t bother,” he says. “Seats were also exclusively economy, so there were no additional protocols we had to take at that point to cater more to certain customers. This all meant that service could be finished up relatively quickly, and within that two-hour flight, cabin crew might get 10 or 20 minutes to sit down, have a coffee and some food, before preparing for landing. And that’s so important when you’re working a 10 or 12-hour day, there’s no other time scheduled for a break, that’s all you got.”

However, when Virgin’s operations ramped up, Fuller says that conditions changed “essentially overnight”. 

“We now had business class seats up the front, and no new crew were introduced on the flights. So now one of the four crew members was dedicated to business class, and the other three now had to cater to fully-serving the other 160 to 170-odd guests,” he says. 

“Now we were providing food and drinks to every passenger on board, which meant service took a lot longer, and in those 1.5 to two-hour flights along the east coast, it would essentially take the entire flight. So, you didn’t get to sit down and take a breather inflight, you still had to achieve the 30 to 45-minute turnaround times and you would still work a 10-hour day, with no opportunity to have a meal, or a drink of water, or put your feet up for even 10 minutes. We were supposed to be provided a 20-minute uninterrupted break, but it was impossible for any to achieve that under those conditions.” 

Fuller says that he would often come home from work feeling “shattered” and didn’t believe the workload was sustainable for anyone. 

“Over at Qantas, they too were doing full-service offerings, but quite often they would also have more crew members on board, while … thanks to business class, we were essentially working with less,” he says. 

Fuller has since left the industry due to the severity of the deterioration of his working conditions, however it wasn’t just due to limited break opportunities. Like pilots, cabin crew members need to adhere to stringent fatigue management protocols. However, Fuller notes that last minute roster changes were often not accounted for in calculating fatigue levels, leaving staff tired, overworked, and under additional pressure. 

“All of a sudden, now I’m working hours that weren’t planned, I might have gone from a day flight to now a red-eye flight, which has happened to me before. I ended up in Sydney, after a red eye, which I wasn’t meant to be on, so I had to sleep during the day, I tried to wake up to minimise my sleep, but I must have turned off my alarm, and ultimately then I couldn’t sleep that night,” he says. “So, the next day, I was required to do three sectors, and by the time I landed in Brisbane I actually forgot, for a moment, how to disarm my door, something I’ve been doing for years at this point. And that is the risk of fatigue.” 

‘We were supposed to be provided a 20-minute uninterrupted break, but it was impossible for any to achieve that under those conditions’

Unions such as the TWU have been advocating for better wages and conditions for Virgin cabin crew for many years, however the fact that Virgin Australia has failed to turn a profit since 2012 has made negotiations difficult. In light of the pandemic that sent Virgin Australia into voluntary administration, and back out the other side, conditions aren’t looking promising for the airline’s cabin crew. To date, flight attendants have seen their base salary slashed by over $11,000, while shift lengths were extended from 9.45 hours to 12 hours, to allow for transcontinental returns, eliminating the need for costly overnight accommodation allowances. 

Meanwhile, the impact of COVID-19 has introduced significant changes to regular duties, which is only adding more pressure on staff, according to current cabin crew staff who did not wish to be named in this article. First is the increased need for every surface to be sanitised between flights, a responsibility that falls upon the cabin crew. This expectation squeezes turnaround times, providing even less opportunity for crew to take a break. Further, corporate cost-cutting measures are trickling into customer experience, such as business class passengers being offered instant noodles as their in-flight meal. This shift has resulted in staff being berated by frustrated passengers, and sources from within Virgin report a recent increase in staff taking sick leave over the abuse they have faced in-flight. There have also been reports suggesting a significant number of people in the industry now wish they had taken a voluntary redundancy when they had the chance. 

While many expected certain changes, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, staff have been blindsided by the sheer extent to which conditions are changing for the worse. The overall consensus is that, while all staff would love to see Virgin Australia thrive, and they would love to continue on in their positions, many are unsure if the long-term conditions they can expect when the industry returns to some realm of normalcy will be livable. 

It’s important to note at this time that the future of Virgin Australia is highly likely to dictate the future of the rest of the industry in Australia, as has been the case for decades. In the years since deregulation, airline management has consistently attempted to push wages and conditions down to meet the floor of the market, rather than the other way around. 

A brief history of Australian industry post-deregulation 

There is a famous anecdote that goes: “if you want to make a small fortune in the airline industry, you best start with a big fortune”. 

Yes, an airline is a notoriously expensive, and historically unprofitable, company to run. Since the 1920s, Australia has seen no less than 400 airlines attempt to turn a profit in the great expanse of this country, with very few still standing today. This has largely been blamed on overregulation of the domestic aviation industry by the Australian government. Prior to 1990, the government would largely have a say in who could fly, where they would fly, on what aircraft, and for how much money. This policy, in addition to the Two Airline Policy that guaranteed the success of, at the time, Australian Airlines and Ansett, appeared to leave every new entrant (think Compass Mark I and Mark II) doomed to fail. As such, the government introduced the Airline Agreement Termination Act, officially deregulating the airline industry. 

Just prior to the introduction of the deregulation legislation, waves were made in the industry. In 1989, at the prospect of new, low-cost airlines soon entering the market, and no longer bound by government wage suppression that saw consistency across the market, domestic pilots around Australia began pushing for pay increases of nearly 30 per cent. It was one of the most drastic and dramatic industrial disputes ever seen in the Australian aviation industry. When little was achieved towards this goal, pilots, under instruction of unions, refused to conduct flights outside of the traditional nine to five hours. Unions argued that if the government wished to treat airline pilots the same as every other job in Australia, then their working conditions should also be the same. This decision wreaked havoc on the domestic travel market, with major repercussions for tourism and trade. Then-prime minister Bob Hawke declared a national emergency, and employed the use of RAAF pilots and pilots from overseas to provide services that the Australian airline pilots were refusing. In the end, the dispute saw a mass exodus of pilots from the industry. 

After the dramatic events, the government moved to restructure the industry, including the merger and privatisation of government owned Qantas and Australian Airlines. The government also gave Ansett the provisions to expand into international routes. Following deregulation in 1990, the government also moved to relax foreign ownership rules for domestic airlines, which welcomed the introduction of Virgin Blue, owned by Sir Richard Branson, in 2000. 

‘The workforce won’t tolerate their working conditions being cut to the bone permanently because of a temporary crisis’

Virgin Blue profited hugely from the demise of Ansett Australia, which it too helped to occur. Ansett unfortunately was subject to a variety of factors that assisted its fall from grace: an ageing fleet; a divisive management team; its workforce was passionate, professional and loyal, but severely overpaid by industry standards. Ansett management made many attempts to rein in spending, including touting a proposal to downgrade to a low-cost carrier and cut salaries back to industry standard, however its union at the time was considered entirely inflexible on such cost-effective ideas. By 2004, Virgin Blue was carrying as many passengers per year as Ansett had prior to its collapse, with a workforce that was less than a third the size. 

Virgin hit its own turbulence with the introduction of Qantas’ low-cost subsidiary, Jetstar, which at the time was being overseen by chief executive Alan Joyce. By 2010, then-Virgin CEO John Borghetti took the opportunity to rebrand and transition into a full service airline to challenge Qantas, rather than continue to battle in the low-cost market with Jetstar. 

Ultimately, it was a decision that damaged the bottom line of both Virgin and Qantas, as the two entered a vicious battle for market share that drove airfares down. As you can already see, it was also a decision that continues to impact the Australian aviation industry to this day. 

A pivot towards pilots 

As mentioned, both Virgin and Qantas took a hit when Borghetti scaled up Virgin Australia in 2010. Ironically, before that time, the success of Virgin’s low-cost operation was placing downward pressure on Qantas’ bottom line, and its pilot’s salaries. However, pressures weren’t just external. By 2006, earning $135,000 per year, Jetstar domestic pilots were now among the lowest paid in the industry, which stirred concern in Qantas pilots, who were, at the time, by far the most handsomely compensated. In that year, then-CEO Geoff Dixon warned Qantas pilots to prepare for negotiations that would see pay slashed, citing increased oil prices and the competition of Virgin as its reasonings. The announcement also saw the chief executive slash funding for its unions. 

“I don’t regard it as just an issue about Virgin,” Dixon said at the time. “It’s about productivity and overall efficiency, not just rates of pay. Given our investment profile and the competitive nature of our business, we have no other option.” 

The incident sparked interest in Qantas staff taking part in its first protected industrial action since 1966. However, this feat did not occur until 2011, when Joyce famously grounded the entire Qantas fleet and locked out unionised staff. By this time, management and unions were already locked in negotiations over new enterprise agreements, with Qantas arguing at the time that there was a 12 per cent pay gap between pilot salaries at now full-scale rival Virgin and its own pilots. Amid the heated negotiations, the airline announced its intentions to expand into the Asia-Pacific region, which added fuel to the fire. Now unions were up in arms not just over pay and conditions disputes but over job security. 

Then-president of AIPA Barry Jackson said, “The issue that pushed us towards taking protected industrial action is a fundamental one – keeping Qantas pilots operating Qantas flights. We now have a management team in charge who believe you can shift operations to Asia, outsource the jobs of Australian Qantas pilots and not do any damage to the Qantas brand in the process.” 

Ultimately, the government got involved, and matters had to be resolved through the channels of Fair Work Australia. 

‘These decisions that affect the vital workers that keep the industry moving are being made by people that actually don’t understand the job’

Looking ahead, the future of pay and conditions for Australian pilots in the post-COVID world could largely depend upon the outcome of Bain Capital’s plan for its newly-purchased Virgin Australia. To date, Bain has been threatening changes that could see pilot packages reduced by up to 40 per cent, in addition to increasing working hours and reducing the number of allocated days off. Virgin’s new owner also wishes to step away from the traditional salary package and instead pay pilots for their flying time, with a minimum number of guaranteed hours. The aim of the exercise is to maximise pilot productivity while keeping costs as low as possible. It is a concerning proposition and, if history has taught us anything, could lead to repercussions for pilots throughout Australia, not just at Virgin. 

Unions have obviously taken a stand against the proposal, in a fight that is still continuing at the time of writing. In September, unions representing various factions of the Australian aviation industry, including the TWU, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP), and the Virgin Australia Group Pilots union (VIPA), banded together to pen a letter that expressed “concerns” over “the direction Virgin is taking”. 

The strongly-worded letter outlined many issues that had arisen since Bain rose to the top in the battle for Virgin Australia. Notably, it said that while unions wish to work with Bain to bring Virgin back into the red, “the workforce won’t tolerate their working conditions being cut to the bone permanently because of a temporary crisis”. “Workers stand ready to negotiate co-operatively but they will not accept a coarse plan to drive down labour, safety and service standards in the medium to long-term,” the letter said. 

“Workers will also raise concerns over negotiations on new enterprise agreements which the company is using to drive down conditions.” 

Virgin pilot unions in particular raised concerns that a “change of culture” in conjunction with “savage reductions terms and conditions will lead to an erosion of training and safety standards”. 

The concern for this “erosion” of safety standards is both highly alarming, and completely necessary, as the competitive nature of the aviation market in Australia will mean the issue will likely not just be confined to the new and up-and-coming Virgin Australia. 

Speaking with Australian Aviation, many unions again demanded that any negotiations be made on temporary terms. 

“When it comes to changes in pay or conditions, we’re open to talking about temporary measures, to get everybody back to work, while being reasonable and sensible about the fact the we don’t yet know what the industry will look like on the other side of this pandemic, and we may not truly know for a while,” Brad Hodson, vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA), says. 

AFAP executive director Simon Lutton shared a similar sentiment, saying that while “each Australian airline and aircraft operations is being affected differently by the pandemic … we remain conscious that the pandemic will be temporary and any concessions agreed by pilots also need to be temporary in nature”. 

Hodson went on to say that the unions will not support any airline wishing to profit off the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing longstanding permanent cost-cutting measures at the expense of staff. 

And what about ground crew? 

While conditions for Australia’s vital aviation ground services sector weren’t as directly impacted by the emerging Qantas/Virgin rivalry as pilots or cabin crew, both pay and working conditions for this workforce has deteriorated dramatically over the last number of years. Currently, the post-COVID outlook for ground crew looks especially dire. The TWU has warned of declining conditions for ground handlers for years, and it appears this is all likely to come to a head in the near future. 

According to the TWU, most frontline aviation ground staff, despite being critical for the smooth operation of the industry, are subjected to difficult working conditions at best, or cruel at worst. Ground workers are mostly offered ‘permanent part-time’ positions, with few guaranteed 38 hours of work per week. In fact, Qantas Ground Services workers are only guaranteed 20 hours of work per week, while Jetstar’s ground service workers are only guaranteed 15. International aviation services provider Swissport only guarantees 60 hours per month for its Australian workforce. 

A report made by the ABC in March 2017 lifted the lid on “unimaginable” conditions for aviation ground service shift workers, which included workers sleeping in the airport, on “filthy” makeshift beds, surrounded by garbage. The report said that the nature of the sector, after years of deregulation and casualisation, now includes painfully short shifts and unreliable hours meaning that workers are forced to accept ‘split shifts’, that being multiple shifts per day, to make ends meet. According to the ABC report, “Sometimes, workers spend 14 or 15 hours at the airport for just seven or eight hours of paid work.” 

The TWU argues that poor working conditions for ground handlers is an extremely serious issue, and places public safety in jeopardy. It mentioned two serious safety incidents in which fatigue and poor shift management nearly caused tragedy. The first occurred November 2014, when a Swissport (then Aerocare) shift supervisor mistakenly got locked inside the cargo hold of a Virgin 737 prior to take-off. Luckily, the person was released shortly thereafter. Just days later, another incident occurred when a Tigerair A320 began pushing back with the cargo door still wide open. 

Meanwhile, aviation safety expert Geoff Dell noted that the perfect storm of the physical effects of heavy lifting, and the physical and mental fatigue associated with split shifts, makes for a “dangerous” workplace. “The actual risk exposure to the individual goes up significantly, and so their potential for injury towards, you know, the back end of that second shift is quite high,” Dell said. According to statistics provided by the TWU, between 2015 and 2017 at Sydney Airport alone, Swissport notated in excess of 130 injury reports across its workforce of 324 people. Dell said at the time: “If that data’s correct, then that is extremely high and would warrant further investigation.” 

Earlier this year, the TWU organised a mass walk-off of duties for Jetstar ground workers, over minimum hour provisions and pay disputes. At that time, TWU national secretary Michael Kaine said that the strike action was not simply over salary disputes. “This is a battle against underemployment and a battle for decent jobs at the airport,” he said. Ultimately, that dispute was resolved when Jetstar bypassed the union and went directly to workers to negotiate. The final deal included “rostering improvements” and a 3 per cent pay rise over the following four years, however no meaningful commitment to increased minimum hours for workers appears to have been promised. 

This deal has since been deemed irrelevant, in light of COVID-19. Qantas announced in August that all 2,600 remaining Qantas and Jetstar ground workers would likely be getting sacked in favour of outsourced labour that would reportedly save the airline $100 million per year. These 2,600 jobs can be added to the airline’s previously announced 6,000 job cuts across the business in the aftermath of the pandemic. The airline said it was a “very tough decision” to say goodbye to these dedicated workers, and cited the pandemic as its reasoning for making the call. However, perhaps tellingly, a report by The Sydney Morning Herald found that the outsourcing of labour for ground services had been in Qantas’ game plan for years. In fact, based on internal documents dating back to 2010, Qantas had always intended to outsource the entirety of its ground handling services by the year 2020. 

Despite this announcement, Kaine said the TWU would continue to stand behind aviation ground workers, and all the workers represented by the union, in its ‘same rate for same job’ campaign. The campaign pushes airports and ground services providers to ensure that workers are provided with fair wages across the industry, workers see appropriate and secure hours, and that overall, safety and security while on the job remain a priority. 

The bottom line 

It’s undeniable that staff are a significant cost to any company. In FY19, Qantas spent $4 billion on employee wages, meaning its 30,000 employees cost the company about the same as fuelling its fleet of 126 aircraft, and accounted for around a third of its yearly operating expenses. Notably, this was also the year Qantas turned $1.3 billion in profit before tax. For many companies struggling to survive, staff are usually the easiest cost to cut, be it through redundancies or cuts to hours and wages, both of which we have seen on a massive scale around the world since the beginning of the pandemic. 

As we have seen, throughout history there has constantly been a to-and-fro battle between management struggling with market conditions pushing back against their passionate, highly-skilled staff fighting for their entitlements. While we may not yet know the exact outcome of the pandemic on the state of the industry going forward, we can make a fairly educated guess that many of the calls made by management will not be made with the comfort of staff in mind. 

As Fuller put it: “I think one of the biggest problems in the industry is the fact that these decisions that affect the vital workers that keep the industry moving are being made by people that actually don’t understand the job. 

“They can step out of their office for some fresh air when they need it. They can pour a coffee or a glass of water when they need it. We don’t quite get that luxury at 40,000 feet.” 

As already discussed, the industry unions have banded together in their displeasure of how Virgin’s new owner is handling the ongoing negotiation process. It appears that Bain is taking a bullheaded approach to industrial relations, which means the near future could be very interesting indeed. The TWU continues to push for Bain to adhere to its earlier promise to retain Virgin Australia’s company culture, a promise that already appears to be diminishing, while also standing behind ground workers that are set to have their livelihoods revoked. 

Thinking outside the box 

However, as the COVID-19 pandemic has become nearly synonymous with the word ‘unprecedented’, one has to wonder if there may be an alternative option to bolstering the airline’s bottom line, without sacrificing its workforce. 

In a blogpost posted to Talking Leads, retired Qantas Captain David Johnson provides an alternative potential solution to the profit v people problem. He argued that airline staff may just be the most “under-utilised” resource available to airline management, particularly when it comes to the bottom line. 

Johnson uses the example of the on-time push-back, a feat that is “highly and correctly” prized by airline management, as it not only serves as an indicator for efficiency, but productivity and performance. He noted that it is those qualities that “translate directly into passenger sales and loyalty”, which is ultimately additional revenue for the airline. 

“In that period which defines the on-time departure, embracing the period of -3 minutes to the scheduled departure time of any and every flight, is where the performance of the whole company succeeds or fails,” Johnson says. “This is where the efficiencies of every single company department combine.” 

So, to management wishing to improve efficiency, productivity and, ultimately, profitability, Johnson says: “There is a fantastic resource available (but rarely utilised by airlines) to provide immediate, detailed and quality information on the success or otherwise of an on-time departure…” He, of course, is referring to the ground-level staff. 

“In my 40 years of airline operations, this resource was simply under-utilised, with just one exception. One great base manager convened a ‘Base Committee’ of pilot and flight attendant volunteer representatives and we met, monthly, together with representative managers and supervisors from other key departments and identified, investigated and solved a wide-ranging list of factors that had had material effect on on-time performance. A key side effect was improved safety, both on the ground and in flight,” Johnson says. 

He concludes that, for the purposes of improving efficiency, and ultimately bolstering the bottom line: “Your front-line staff are one of your best assets for this purpose, aside from their more obvious duties.” 

Meanwhile, for ex-cabin crew Fuller, the aviation industry is so unique that the approach to costcutting measures really should be more considered than in other sectors: “Employees are a cost to an airline; they’re a cost to any business. But, in this industry, you can’t cut costs at the expense of public safety, because that price is just too high.” 

With that sentiment, Fuller suggests that airlines around the world, with some of the brightest minds and highest-paid executives, should think outside the box for alternative ways to cut costs, or rather, increase revenue, that aren’t just through the slashing of wages and conditions for workers. 

He even suggests other means of cost efficiency that management could consider to keep staff conditions appropriate, and thus keep flying safer for everyone. For Fuller, it’s rather important moving forward that Virgin and Qantas don’t follow through on their previous ‘race to the bottom’ promise of obscenely cheap air fares, which were announced in the hope of reinvigorating demand for travel, if that translates into poorer pay and conditions for staff. 

“Australia has really stringent safety regulations when it comes to aviation. So, when people buy their ticket on any airline within Australia, the idea of safety often doesn’t come into their mind, because they know Australia’s industry is entirely underpinned by that,” he says. “But in reality, for flying to be so affordable, that cost has to cut from somewhere else in the business. And as we know, often that means poorer pay and conditions for workers onboard.” 

He concludes, “When it comes to that balance between the bottom line and the human factors, I don’t know what the right answer is, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a fatigued workforce is a less-safe workforce. And in aviation, there just shouldn’t be room to negotiate on that.” 

The cycle continues 

The international aviation sector is notorious for its cyclical ‘boom and bust’ nature, which means each generation of aviation employees is bound to see a significant shift at least once in their career. If the stories told in this article are anything to go by, we know that these experiences are by no means unprecedented, though the scale of today’s crisis may be so. 

‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a fatigued workforce is a less-safe workforce’ 

All this is to say that the Australian aviation industry is filled to the brim with passionate people. It is filled with people who want to continue to do their job, and do it well. It is filled with people who want to see their company succeed, just as much as managers and chief executives do. It is also filled with people who are concerned with the uncertainty of looming changes to the way they work. Perhaps in the future we will see better communication between staff and management, as they work together to bolster profitability to the benefit of everyone. Perhaps, we may see airfares increased to cover some of the losses seen by airlines, so that other areas of the business, including wages, don’t have to be cut. Or perhaps we will instead see history repeat itself, as staff cop the majority of the impact. 

Ultimately, while we cannot say for sure what the industry will look like in the months and years ahead, hopefully you can all rest easy knowing that between your commitment to the job you love, the unrelenting work of your unions, and your friends here at Australian Aviation – you’re going to be OK.