iscoverIn Focus
Flying past disaster
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Grounded planes. Fuming unions. Government intervention. Qantas’ brush with disaster 10 years ago sounds more familiar than we may care to admit.
There’s a line from one of Geoffrey Thomas’ articles that, lost in the middle of the coronavirus crisis as we are, jams in your head like a door stop: “This dispute is about jobs and whether there will be a recognisable aviation industry based in Australia in the future.” Qantas’ extraordinary battle of attrition with the unions nearly a decade ago might not have been contagious, but, in many ways, the panic, the anger and the fear were. No industry bungy jumps towards a furnace quite like ours. The articles that follow made for compelling reading back in 2011, but, right now, provide a whole new perspective with the benefit of hindsight.
During this current downturn, Australian Aviation’s new publisher, Momentum Media, commissioned a huge, ongoing survey that has so far been completed by 6,000 professionals, including 900 in our sector. The aim was to not only try and quantify the personal loss but demonstrate it through words, too. So, while numbers revealed more than 60 per cent of respondents had their hours cut, it also gave readers a chance to tell us how they were feeling.
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“I’m a stood down Virgin Australia Cabin Crew team member. I worked full-time crewing long-haul flights on the 777. I’m also a casual grade 3 flight instructor in the GA sector. Both roles have been reduced to zero hours a month,” wrote one.
“We predict we will be at 70 per cent (of pre-COVID-19) business in mid-2021 but we will operate at 25 per cent or less for the next three to six months minimum, not sure that is sustainable!” said another.
“The aviation industry is one of the first to be impacted and one of the last to recover,” concluded a final reader.
But there was another interesting fact, too: those who suffered the most with their mental health were far more likely to be younger. Could it be, then, that those with longer service in the industry have seen it all before?
With that in mind, here is a selection of articles that guide you, in forensic detail, through the last great crisis to ground the Australian aviation industry. Three unions at the heart of the row, representing engineers, ground staff and pilots, waged a long, bitter battle against Qantas over job security and conditions, demanding guarantees on outsourcing as the airline apparently started to shift its focus to Asia. Cue legal action, snap walkouts and no shortage of anger.
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