|
The
airline said last week it could buy up to 12 Airbus SE <AIR.PA>
A350 planes for the commercial flights of up to 21 hours that
includes the Sydney-London route, but the deal depends on pilots
voting to approve a pay agreement in March.
"To be clear, we have not yet placed an order for this aircraft
because we still have a gap to close in the business case,"
Qantas Chief Pilot Dick Tobiano said in an internal memo to
pilots seen by Reuters.
Qantas said Australia's aviation regulator had provisionally
advised it saw no regulatory obstacles to the flights, which
could extend pilot duty times to as long as 23 hours to account
for potential delays.
The airline has conducted crew fatigue studies on London-Sydney
and New York-Sydney test flights.
On its current long-haul flights, Qantas has a crew of one
captain, one first officer and two second officers, the latter
of which can only fly at cruising altitudes and cannot perform
takeoffs or landings.
Rival Singapore Airlines Ltd <SIAL.SI> uses two captains and two
first officers on its near-19 hours flights from Singapore to
New York.
Qantas has offered to crew non-stop flights to London and New
York with one captain, two first officers and one second officer
for the first 18 months so it can evaluate fatigue-related
issues, according to its pilot union newsletter, two pilots and
a company source familiar with the matter who were not
authorized to speak with media. Qantas declined to comment.
Qantas has proposed the pilots on its A330 fleet, which fly
mostly cross-country and Asian flights, also fly the ultra-long
haul missions on the A350, since they can be licensed on both
models.
A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman said it had yet to
receive a formal application for the flights that would allow it
to make specific requests on matters such as experience levels
but the airline's overall ultra-long haul safety framework
provided a "satisfactory and detailed analysis of the identified
risks".
Adam Susz, a 737 captain and union negotiator for the Australian
and International Pilots Association, said Qantas had tabled a
draft proposal that had been deemed unacceptable by the union
committee, in part because it introduced a lower pay scale for
new second officers. But he said talks would resume in the new
year.
"I am pretty confident that we will get agreement in the end,"
Susz told Reuters on Monday. "I don't think the issues are
insurmountable but there are a couple of elements to the Qantas
proposal that we find extremely unpalatable and we will avoid
those the best we can."
(Reporting by Jamie Freed; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
