QANTAS Airways (Sydney) has announced today it has completed its study and will consolidate its maintenance operations at Avalon and Brisbane resulting in 500 job redundancies (losses).
The company issued the following statement:
“QANTAS has completed a review of its heavy aircraft maintenance and engineering operations in Australia and will consolidate heavy maintenance work into Brisbane and Avalon.
The restructure is necessary as there is currently not enough heavy maintenance work required for three separate facilities and the introduction of new technology and modern aircraft means there will be a further 60 per cent reduction in heavy maintenance requirements over the next seven years.
As a result of the restructure, heavy maintenance on Boeing 737 aircraft will move from Melbourne (Tullamarine) and be maintained in Brisbane along with Boeing 767 aircraft and Airbus A330s. The base at Avalon will continue to maintain the Boeing 747-400s. It will also conduct some work on Boeing 737s and 767s, some aircraft reconfiguration work and remain available for one-off maintenace tasks.
QANTAS will cease heavy maintenance at Tullamarine by August 2012, however line maintenance will continue to be conducted at the facility employing more than 300 people.
QANTAS Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce said QANTAS would continue to be the only major airline in the world to do heavy maintenance at its own facilities in Australia.
QANTAS undertook a two-month consultation with unions, employees and other stakeholders to discuss the challenges of having three sub-optimal heavy maintenance bases and options the company was considering.
There will be a net reduction of 500 positions as a result of the restructure (QANTAS will still employ over 30,000 people in Australia, and around 5,000 in QANTAS Engineering).
There will be a reduction of 422 positions at Tullamarine. At Avalon, 113 positions will no longer be required due to the recent retirements of five 747 aircraft this year. There will be 30 new positions available in line maintenance in Melbourne and 5 jobs in Sydney. All QANTAS heavy maintenance apprentices will be given the opportunity to finish their apprenticeships with QANTAS.
There will also be new job opportunities in Brisbane as a result of 737 heavy maintenance moving there.
Further changes to Avalon are expected as the business continues to modernise.
Where possible, QANTAS will offer relocation to Brisbane, including a generous relocation package, or redeployment to other roles within QANTAS. There will also be a program of voluntary redundancies.
QANTAS will offer significant support packages for affected employees including redundancy packages well in excess of the legislative requirements, career transition, access to skills and training programs and counselling for employees and their families.
Consolidating heavy maintenance and other engineering initiatives will have an annual benefit of A$70-$100 million. One off costs associated with the heavy maintenance restructure announced today including redundancies will be approximately A$50 million. This takes estimated transformation costs for the second half of FY12 to between A$250-$260 million.”
Copyright Photo: John Adlard.
QANTAS Slide Show: CLICK HERE