Qantas belatedly opened its engineering academy in Brisbane last week, more than 18 months after it was promised as one of former CEO Alan Joyce’s last initiatives. In the initial tranche are thirty first-year students who the airline will be hoping can patch up the run-down engineering division that keeps aloft its ageing fleet.
Under Joyce, the once world-leading apprentice program was unwound, while elsewhere large swaths of the engineering workforce were sacked in 2012 and onwards — and again during COVID — as the company moved most of its heavy maintenance offshore.
This left the workforce’s average age in the mid-50s and Brisbane as the lone heavy maintenance depot in Australia, engineers told Crikey. Female students are expected to make up a quarter of engineering apprentices starting this year, up from 18% in 2023, Qantas said.
Qantas Group will have more than 250 engineering apprentices in training across Australia this year, up a dramatic 45% from the previous year. But engineers said it was “too little, too late”.
“Engineers take four years to train and it’s at least that again before they can really do the job. It’s not just something you can pick up overnight,“ one engineer told Crikey.
There is also a global shortage of aviation engineers, with an estimated 27% of the global workforce set to retire in the next decade amid surging international demand. Over the past year, Qantas has added more engineers and brought some out of retirement, sources said, but the company is battling an ageing fleet that requires more maintenance, due to Joyce having ordered no new aircraft over a span of 14 years. It is also becoming clear that the newest generation of aircraft engines are, at least for now, requiring more maintenance sooner.
Completion rates for apprentices in Australia are also sagging. The completion rate in 2023 for all individuals who commenced an apprenticeship or traineeship in 2019 was 54.8%, down one percentage point compared with those who commenced in 2018.
Despite the usual spin by the company’s tireless public relations team, much of the “academy” — like so much of the airline — has been outsourced to Queensland’s state-owned Australian Aviation, which also has a campus in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This follows Qantas’ sale and outsourcing of its main Sydney flight simulator centre to Canadian firm CAE in 2022.
It’s hardly a secret that Qantas’ ageing fleet is limping and the company does not have sufficient engineers — or parts — to keep up with the type of regular maintenance the once-storied airline’s aircraft needs. Between 5am and 10.30am yesterday, Qantas cancelled 23 flights including the daily Brisbane-to-Los Angeles flight. As of 6am this morning, a further eight had already been cancelled for today, including the Los Angeles-Brisbane flight — a not-so-fun end to the holidays for scores of Qantas passengers.
Such is the state of the Qantas fleet that CEO Vanessa Hudson is finally facing reality and is in the market for dozens of reconditioned 737 engines to help prop up the Limping Roo, Crikey has learned. Pilots said that 737 flights have been cut back so the airline can better deal with what are now regular cancellations and delays due to maintenance issues.
As if that’s not enough, Qantas just got a taste of fresh international competition for its already sagging offshore business, with Virgin’s first sale with partner Qatar Airways last week offering bargain peak season European airfares on one of the world’s best airlines.
Qantas is struggling on a number of its international routes precisely because of its ageing aircraft and dated on-board services, pilots said, a view backed up by multiple online chat groups. “It’s stuck between far better products from the Middle Eastern and other high-end competitors up the front of the plane, and at the price-conscious end it’s being soundly beaten by Chinese and other Asian airlines,” one pilot said.
Indeed, the Roo’s entire international business market share is shrinking, according to the latest data from national airport operator Airservices, and the airline has little ability to increase its capacity beyond wet leasing planes as it awaits already-delayed new aircraft.
Qantas is being slammed by increased competition on US routes due to the open skies agreement with Washington. Passenger loads post-holidays are set to revert to the loss-making ones that were a feature of the latter part of last year, according to flight loads to Los Angeles and Dallas next week seen by Crikey.
Overall, Qantas flights grew a bare 1% during 2024 as airline demand increased, along with a 2.1% population jump and a 5.8% increase in international flights. Cancellations across Australian carriers in December jumped to 3%, placing it near the bottom of the international table.
Pilots believe the Qatar/Virgin venture will see a further loss of international market share, and that a threat to its higher margin domestic business has been underestimated.
That’s why Hudson is said to be looking at wet-leasing six more A330s from Finnair for Qantas international routes (it already has two plying Thailand and Singapore routes): so she can ramp up capacity on her higher margin domestic business.
Rather than respond to Crikey’s questions, Qantas’ PR team did what it does best: make an announcement. Today’s was about the fact that they have chosen a designer to create new uniforms for their staff. Because with broken planes, angry pilots and pissed-off customers, that is exactly what Qantas needs: a bit more lipstick on the pig.
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