The Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) says that pilots are concerned that commercial pressures from a takeover of Qantas may conflict with their professional standards.
AIPA general manager Peter Sommerville said one option was to seek to block the sale, but in a report in The Age this morning, he conceded the 2,500 Qantas pilots could only raise funds to buy one per cent of Qantas’ shares, well short of the nine per cent needed to halt the sale.
Mr Sommerville said the Association would discuss its concerns in a meeting with the Federal Government this week, adding that there remained a fair degree of uncertainty about what the deal involved, how the new owners would deal with employees, and whether commercial pressures might conflict with professional standards.
He told ABC radio, “Pilots are particularly concerned about professional standards and we have been trying to talk to the consortium for a little bit of time now without success”. “We are talking about whenever there are commercial pressures between operating safely and making a buck, there is always a tension there”. “It’s not about … being absolutely certain and zero risk in anything you do in life, but it’s about being sensible about it.”
Qantas Directors last week recommended acceptance of the $5.60 a share bid, from a consortium comprising Macquarie, US private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, Allco Equity Partners and Allco Finance Group, and Canadian buyout group Onex Corp.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is undertaking an investigation of the deal, which must meet Australian legislative requirements including majority Australian ownership.
Mr Sommerville said it was an option for pilots to seek to block the takeover, with each contributing $50,000 adding, “What we would prefer to do is talk to the consortium members, talk to Qantas management and actually try to get some certainty in this situation”. He said, “However, in the alternative what we would be looking at doing is convincing 9% plus 1 of the current Qantas shareholders, mums and dads and perhaps here are also some institutions out there who do have concerns about what might be on the horizons for all of the stakeholders”.
Report by The Mole
