Qantas starts parking planes in desert
SYDNEY: Qantas has sacked about 20% of its workforce and stopped taking new bookings for international flights until at least March next year.
Last month, group chief executive Alan Joyce had signalled the move, and announced the carrier would ground about 100 aircraft and parked some of the A380s for ‘‘at least three years’’.
Yesterday, the Australian national carrier officially removed international flight bookings — bar New Zealand — from its website until 28 March, 2021.
Aviation commentator Geoffery Thomas told RNZ the outlook was grim.
‘‘One of the things that we’re hoping for is that maybe we can do a travel bubble that involves WA, the Northern Territory and New Zealand, and exclude New South Wales and Victoria until such time they get the Covid cases down to zero.’’
Mr Thomas said Qantas’ move would definitely help save on costs of crew and fuel.
‘‘There’s no chance that they’re going to operate [aircraft] at a loss . . . You’ll go out of business very quickly doing that.’’
The airline has parked at least 12 of its grounded aircraft in the Mojave Desert in California.
‘‘A lot of planes are going to the Californian desert.
‘‘There are lots of aircraft parks there which are set up for cocooning aeroplanes and maintaining them.
‘‘There’s a lot of daytoday or weektoweek maintenance required to make sure these aeroplanes are in perfect condition so you need the engineer facilities to make that happen.’’
It appeared New Zealand and Australian airlines were taking on a difficult dynamic to simulate travel for the tourism industry while also struggling to make ends meet, Mr Thomas said.
For travellers elsewhere, ‘‘the philosophy appears to be suppression of Covid is acceptable and we’ll live that.’’
‘‘Air travel globally is now approximately 50% what it was preCovid times, so US, China, Europe, they’re all travelling.’’
Qantas said it would be reviewing the international flight services in July next year.
Mr Thomas said it took 1000 manhours to bring an aircraft out of cocoon.
‘‘And then you’ve got crew that are out of hours.
‘‘They’ve got to go back into the simulator and do sessions. They’ve got to do refresher courses.
‘‘There are so many things to come to bear in [mind when] bringing a fleet and its crew back to flying status.’’
Airlines had to take their time in order to do things safely and responsibly, he said. — RNZ