Former Australia Civil Aviation Safety Authority chairman Dick Smith has warned that Qantas International will go bankrupt unless it moves its operating base to Asia.
Smith told The Australian that high wages and government policies that have opened up routes to/from Australia to too many carriers have put Qantas’s mainline international operations in danger.
His comments have infuriated Qantas pilots and engineers who are in the process of negotiating new workplace agreements with the airline, in part, to keep jobs onshore.
Ahead of a July 24 announcement by Qantas of structural changes to the airline, Smith claimed that QF was in a similar position to manufacturers forced to move offshore because of an inability to compete with lower-cost competitors.
He told The Australianthat servicing an aircraft in Singapore was 50 percent cheaper than in Australia, and many airlines were operating at much lower costs than Qantas.
“The politicians have decided that we should have this open skies [regime] where you have to compete with completely different wage scales and salary scales,†Smith said.
“If they [QF] don’t move virtually everything up into Asia, they will go broke.”
