| Subject: Jetstar has been struggling all morning to reconcile its claims that pilots are encouraged to raise safety issues after sacking a first officer, Joe Eakins, who did just that, in an opinion piece published by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in October. |
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Friday, 26 November 2010 / 11 comments
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Date Posted: 27/11/10 1:24:40
Topics:National Broadband Networkclimate changeJulia GillardStephen ConroycricketVictorian Election 2010The Ashes2010 Victorian ElectionALPThe AustralianFriday, 26 November 2010 / 11 comments
Catch 22 for Jetstar over sacked pilot’s safety concerns
by Ben Sandilands
Jetstar has been struggling all morning to reconcile its claims that pilots are encouraged to raise safety issues after sacking a first officer, Joe Eakins, who did just that, in an opinion piece published by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in October.
According to Jetstar’s CEO for Australia and New Zealand, David Hall, “We have never sacked nor would we ever take disciplinary action against anybody raising issues around safety,” he said, while defending its dismissal of Eakins last Thursday, on the grounds that his employment agreement had a confidentiality clause that obliged him not to “put in the public domain any information that they become privy to as part of their employment”.
Very Catch-22.
Hall said Eakins was also obliged “… to actively promote and encourage the Jetstar brand and not to raise issues that could be in any way detrimental”.
Even more Catch-22.
In short, Eakins was encouraged to do something the company could fire him for doing, since it would be hard not to raise a host of matters concerning pilot training arrangements at Jetstar without being detrimental to companies investment in under-skilled pilot recruiting practices recently outlawed in the United States.
Such clauses are, of course, common in employment agreements. But pilots are obliged to reveal safety concerns under Australian air transport regulations, the strengthening of which is provided before in a private member’s bill recently proposed by independent South Australian senator Nick Xenophon.
That bill will come parliament some time next year, after another Xenophon initiative, a Senate Inquiry into pilot training and safety standards in Australia. It has its first hearings in Sydney next Wednesday, at which Jetstar is already in its sights as a serial offender for not reporting what are defined in the Air Transport legislation as “reportable” safety related occurrences, especially one involving two Jetstar pilots who screwed up an approach to Melbourne Airport in fog in July 2007.
The Eakins case is complicated by its industrial linkage. He belongs to the Australian and International Pilots Association, which represents most unionised Qantas pilots, but has only minority status in covering Jetstar’s unionised pilots, most of whom belong to the Australian Federation of Air Pilots.
The Qantas based union is locked in a bitter struggle with Qantas over its claimed determination to deliberately gut the full service product, and its workplace standards, to support a takeover of pay and conditions by the Jetstar standards.
This was a point driven home by Eakins in his offending article. Qantas is avoiding the limitations of the Qantas Sale Act by offshoring Jetstar activity to Asia, and even basing Australian registered jets in Singapore to be flown by cheaper pilots, while recruiting discount foreign pilots to take domestic contracts that would undermine the Ts and Cs of Jetstar’s domestic pilots.
In short, Eakins was publicly getting between the managements of Qantas/Jetstar and big dollars. A dangerous place to be.
And he was also playing the safety card, which says that without more pay, pilots are less safe. That is always going to be controversial, yet there is a body, (but so far no bodies) of evidence to supports union criticism of the de-skilling of pilots by the third party training courses Jetstar has relied upon in recent years.
These arrangements are under the microscope in the terms of the Senate inquiry, by coincidence coming after the QF32 A380 incident in which old school, high cost, experienced Qantas pilots saved a stricken jet from a crash.
And Eakins is gone. Expelled from the ranks of “Yes” pilots that Jetstar tolerates, provided they offer to work for even less money, or get replaced by cheaper foreign pilots even on routes between Australian cities.
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11 Comments
David
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 2:47 pm | Permalink
Jet Star = Qantas = joke. Regretfully safety is not a joke and Jet Star should be thanking their pilots for bringing safety concerns to their notice rather than playing the heavy and sacking them. I would have thought excellent PR would be a priority. Obviously not.
zut alors
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 3:28 pm | Permalink
David Hall was interviewed on ABC Breakfast and I found him to be unconvincing. The manner in which he repetitively touted safety as being of paramount concern to Jetstar certainly didn’t cut the mustard with me. He seemed to have trouble looking the interviewer directly in the eye whilst making the point.
a321
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 4:30 pm | Permalink
A minor correction is required - the AIPA (Australian and International Pilots Association) represents a majority of jetstar pilots with well over 300 members whereas due to lack of effective representation, the AFAP (Australian Federation of Air Pilots) represents a rapidly dwindling number of jetstar pilots (numbered less that 100 now).
Other than that - great article and from someone who works for the carrier, I can say that it is high time many of the facts about jetstar managements poor decisions (particularly those that have a direct impact on safety) come to light as soon as possible.
I will support Joe Eakins 100%
kennethrobinson2
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 4:32 pm | Permalink
I find it strange, that once Qantas, was the safest airline in the world, now we have the cost cutting management, denying that safety has slipped, despite the current rash of problems
Lady White Peace
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 4:46 pm | Permalink
Hey everyone…. read a book titled ” THE MEN WHO KILLED QANTAS” The sequel will be …. “THE GREEDY IDIOTS WHO KILLED JETSTAR
I find it appalling that the person who has my life in his hands 39000 feet above earth is paid as much as a bus driver.
Jetstar CEO should be replaced by someone from Singapore… who cares where… but pilots who have the life of 400 plus people in their hands should be AUSTRALIANS and should be paid a salary commensurate with the risk and responsibility that they have.
I am NEVER going to travel on JETSTAR OR QANTAS until the CEO’s of those companies are replaced by people and not profit robots.
Bill Parker
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 8:38 pm | Permalink
After one appalling experince with Jetstar I would never travel with them again. Yet next Tuesday I have to travel (at someone else’s expense) across the country (QF) and I am beginning to loathe the thought of air travel. Is it too much to demand that I should feel safe?
Lady White Peace
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 10:41 pm | Permalink
The Budget Airline mentality is a psychiatric disease or mental disorder and this genre of management style needs to be committed.
The fatal crash of a Lockheed TriStar in the Florida Everglades in 1972 was due to the crew being so focused on a burnt out landing gear indicator light that they failed to notice the autopilot disengaged and the aircraft gradually descending into the ground.
Similarly the CEOs today are so focussed on the short term monetary gains and management bonuses that they have lost sight of the big picture and are slowly setting their airlines up for the inevitable consequences.
In aviation terms they have “lost their situational awareness.”
puddleduck
Posted Friday, 26 November 2010 at 11:50 pm | Permalink
The article in The Age was fantastic - a beautiful piece of writing, telling the flying public what they need to know. Jetstar’s response is, in my view, another nail in its coffin, and bound to backfire. In the few conversations I’ve had about the issue today, at least three people have said Qantas is no longer their carrier of choice.
Ah, and I remember well my ‘I own an airline’ tshirt in the early 80s. Now, what should it say? “Driving to the bottom on safety’?
Gavin Moodie
Posted Saturday, 27 November 2010 at 8:30 am | Permalink
While I support people expressing their concerns publicly, there is surely considerable difference between reporting safety concerns internally and ‘thru the right channels’ and repeating them in the mass media. Presumably Jetstar sacked Eakins for the latter, not the former.
flashpoint
Posted Saturday, 27 November 2010 at 10:36 am | Permalink
On the channel 9 morning show Joe Eakins stated that he did go thru the appropiate internal channels prior to going to the media. What was he meant to do when Jetstar management refuses to address the concerns?
Sancho
Posted Saturday, 27 November 2010 at 12:04 pm | Permalink
“Sack”. In Australia we sack people, not fire. Maybe Ben was eating a cookie while he wrote this, but he’ll be out on the sidewalk on his ass if doesn’t play ball, ya’ll.
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