Qantas crews in the UK very unhappy

Setting up a flight attendant base in London, was originally designed to save Qantas $18m a year, but the cost of the 400 strong flight crew base in London is rising and not only is Qantas not happy but neither are the crews based in London.

Qantas’ British flight attendants are unhappy that they are paid 20% less than their British Airways counterparts and the British recruited crews are also unhappy that Qantas is offering the 200 Australian flight attendants seconded to the London base early last year, $10,000 a year to stay until 2008.

As a result, morale among Qantas’ flight attendants in London, who receive an estimated £24,000 annual package, equivalent to $A60,000, appears to be very low because of the cost of living in London, in addition, while the Australian crews are paid slightly more to work in London, they have to work more hours.

It is also reported that some Australian crew commute to work from mainland Europe to reduce accommodation costs.

It appears that Amicus, the union that represents Qantas’ British flight attendants and its members at the base have rejected a 9% pay rise over three years and as a result, Qantas is sending a team of industrial relations negotiators to London to hold further talks with Amicus.

These challenges come at a difficult time for Qantas as they plan to cut 325 of their 4000 long haul cabin crew jobs in Australia.

There is also growing concern in unions over Qantas’ plans to increase the presence of low cost Jetstar, while they continue to slash the higher paid legacy carrier Qantas jobs.

In the meantime, Qantas’ chief executive Geoff Dixon has criticised the pilots union’s attempts to have all Jetstar and Qantas pilots on the same agreement, with the Australian and International Pilots Association resisting Qantas’ plans to set up lower-paying contracts for Jetstar International, which will launch long-haul flights in November.

So, the stoushes continue in Qantas in its evolution to become much more cost efficient and profitable, returning a better ROI to its investors, but struggling to do so in the face of rising fuel and labour costs.

At the same time, Jetstar International appears to be destined to become the international saviour to Qantas’ woes and it will be interesting in the next 12 months to see how this scenario continues to evolve and in particular post the intial launch, on which routes Jetstar International will operate and which Qantas will be pulled off.

Watch the Mole to be kept up to date with the saga of the Qantas Jetstar evolution!

Report by the Mole