NJS – AFAP Council Meeting – May 2024 Minutes
On the 16th of May the NJS AFAP Council met at QCC in Sydney along with Chris Aikens (AFAP Senior Industrial Officer) for our quarterly council meeting. Joining a bit later in the day were NJS management representatives of Tony Macdonald (Head of Flight Operations), Justine Hughes (Manager Flight Crew) and Ian Verner (Senior Manager Line Operations). Andrew Page (COO) was able to make it in for 30 minutes or so at the end of the meeting.
It was agreed that the main focus of this meeting was to push improvements to our current enterprise agreement. Overall we left the meeting believing we are making some headway, but we need to continually keep pressure on the company and Qantas IR to realise improvements to our conditions.
Council Vacancy filled
We are very happy to welcome Paul Davison (BNE captain) to the NJS Pilot Council. This appointment makes up the required number of four members on the council.
As a reminder, if any AFAP members are keen to see how these meetings are run, you are always free to come along.
HIMS Program
The AFAP supports the Human Intervention Motivation Study (HIMS), which is a drug and alcohol prevention and rehabilitation program, designed to remove the stigma associated with addiction while providing a pathway to recovery. Joanne Janes (AFAP Operations Manager) briefed us on the program that has been lobbied to CASA and major airlines as an alternative to otherwise very punitive arrangements when crew find they are having problems with substance abuse or have received a positive (non-negative) DAMP test. Qantas are very much in support of the HIMS program and this drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility will be implemented under the company DAMP in the near future. For more information, please visit
https://www.afap.org.au/who-we-are/affiliated-organisations/hims.
Accommodation
The only area currently of concern is the Essendon Fields Hyatt being used for A220 type rating training should more than 3x consecutive nights be rostered whilst on the course. At this stage, we’re not getting any adverse feedback from members with their current course rosters.
Meals
Once again the council discussed meal provision, quality and eating opportunity. Although we didn’t get a chance to discuss with management this time around, we will continue to push for a trial alternative meal option per pairing (aka Qantaslink DHC8 style).
First Officer A220 Upgrade Protocols
Tony Macdonald confirmed that a minimum of 6 months and 150 hours of experience in NJS operations (not on type as per previous company advice) would be the standing prerequisite. The other minimum experience requirements in OM-A2 2.3.1 are currently under review. Therefore, all current first officers irrespective of experience should respond to the recently published command upgrade EOI if they wish to be placed on the list of candidates. Upgrades on the A220 shall be based strictly on seniority regardless of base, so this presents a very unique opportunity for those crew affected.
The NJS Council welcomed the change in position from the company that we had been advocating for some time as a commonsense approach. The Council are appreciative of the ongoing feedback from pilots that has enabled us to keep the pressure on the company to address what was previously an arbitrary and unfair requirement to upgrades. It also shows that consistent pressure from your Council reps can bring positive results to the pilot group.
A220 Roster Protocols
Tony Macdonald has had a chance to review our suggested alternative set of roster protocols that we gave to the company back in September. These effectively have the current B717 protocols mirrored for initial A220 flying (whilst the new aircraft flies the same type of flying currently performed). Tony indicated that these protocols are with Workforce Planning to assess the implications on the foreseeable A220 flying. A company response to the alternative roster protocols concept should be forthcoming quite soon and we look forward to reporting further as soon as we can.
Duty Travel
Each evening, duty travel is coded manually by Crewing to be allocated in an aisle or window seat. A review by the company of the previous few days leading into the meeting was that they were achieving about 85 – 90% success on the day. Some late bookings or amendments to bookings are sometimes resulting in a middle seat however. Also, the gate agent is authorised to assign these middle seats if circumstances warrant and that may happen even after check in. An automated system for seat allocation coding is happening in the background and that may take until the end of the year to resolve.
‘Alternate duty travel’ was again discussed with management. This has consistently fallen on deaf ears and is likely to remain so. The current base move EOI should largely resolve this issue when crew are living and working in their base of domicile.
Base Transfers
All crew should be aware of the Base Transfer EOI that has come about through direct lobbying by the AFAP NJS Pilot Council. As of last Thursday 26 people have submitted EOIs. The company mentioned that successful applications need not be actioned in the future if the crew member’s circumstances change. Requested move dates so far have been fairly evenly spread over the allocated period also. We also requested advice from the company if salary sacrifice arrangements could be provided to these crew requesting voluntary base moves.
Pilot Retention
It’s difficult to know where the company is going with monetary improvements to our EA. NJS salary increases apparently received the ‘green light’ earlier in the year, but stagnation of the Network negotiations had the deal pulled by Qantas IR. We discussed the Virgin ‘in principle’ agreement with management as that organisation’s working environment, overtime threshold and EA provisions will be fairly comparable to NJS. Management say they are working on it and if they could they would do it ‘today’. EA monetary improvements may come to fruition, but in what form management were unwilling to clarify. All we can advise is that we will continue to lobby the company to act and ask that all of our members (and the wider pilot group) do the same. The current HOFO base visits are a perfect opportunity for crew to do this, so if you can, please meet with Tony around the network - it would be highly beneficial.
B717 retirement and A220 Courses
We were advised that from the 7x B717 airframes in July, we will drop to 2x airframes by the end of October and (at this stage), 0x airframes by the 19th of November 2024.
Approximately 30x NJS crew have not been allocated A220 courses. At a point in time the company will be required to roster crew that are available and have not returned EOI responses onto scheduled courses.
The company indicated that while crew await course availability, they may be offered some pre-course material to complete (ie: EPs, etc.). Crew may also be asked to take leave ahead of their courses when they have over and above the 56 days accrued (detailed in the EA).
Other items
Some pilots have been told by Crewing that should they call in sick for a multi-day trip, that their roster could be amended at will on the following days in order to get them back on their original schedule. We briefed the company that this is not per the EA and that any reallocation of duties needs to be by way of the established displaced reserve arrangement.
Sydney Kingsford Smith and Western Sydney International airport operations shall be treated as two separate bases once flying schedules are bedded in. Interim measures shall be in place to get operations in place at the new airport from late 2026.
A220 flying into CFS, LST and HBA shall commence in the next few months.
The Training and Checking department shall undergo a restructure.
Senior Base Pilots are to be replaced by 4x Assistant Flight Ops Managers around the network. These are to come from the pilot cohort and will be a part time position along with completing a flying role.
Very soon the 2x current A220 airframes shall each undergo a 7-10 day maintenance program to attend to a wing fillet corrosion prevention treatment. All following airframes should have this done at the factory pre-delivery.
iFlight feedback is to be directed via the Base Managers in the first instance. The rostering interface does appear a bit clunky and review is taking place with the program provider.
We asked the company to advise how SDOs can be viewed on iFlight and they indicated that they shall report.
From the recent advertisements for direct entry training captains, approximately 8 or 9 candidates appear suitable for interview.
2024 Meetings Schedule
Tentatively we have pencilled in the following locations and dates for this year’s remaining council meetings –17th of July in Canberra and the 23rd of October in Hobart.
Once again, if members are interested in attending, they would be very welcome. Please contact us on the email addresses below and we’ll send details when confirmed. As always your council reps are:
Anthony Clouting on
clouters@me.com
Eric Galliers on
ericgalliers@hotmail.com
Justin Gordon on
justin.gordon69@gmail.com
Paul Davison on
paul_davison85@hotmail.com
In addition, AFAP staff member Chris Aikens can be contacted on
chris@afap.org.au. The AFAP also has their Member Assistance Program (MAP) which can be accessed via Freecall 1300 307 912.