NJS – AFAP Council Meeting – 30th of October 2024 - Minutes
On the 30th of October the NJS AFAP Council met in the Melbourne crew room offices along with Chris Aikens (AFAP Senior Industrial Officer) for our quarterly council meeting. Unfortunately NJS management couldn’t meet in person, however Tony Macdonald (Head of Flight Operations), Tiana Stevens (BNE Base Manager) and Justine Hughes (Flight Crew Manager) joined us for two hours via Teams. We also had a follow up meeting on Friday the 8th of November with Tony and Andrew Page (then Chief Operating Officer).
Company brief by the HOFO
Lots of items were presented and we were given an opportunity to ask questions and provide some input.
The company had recently been through a Flight Operations CASA audit and that was quite successful with no major observations made. Darwin and Singapore hotel options are being explored for our upcoming operations into those ports. Low visibility operations procedures are with CASA for approval. EDTO (180 minutes) application is being worked on and RNP-AR application will follow.
A working group on catering is being established with the impending international operations about to proceed and also based on our recent feedback. A220 deliveries are scheduled as follows - #5 end Nov 2024, #6 March, #7 May, #8 and #9 in September, #10 October and #11 in December of 2025. #12 - #18 will be in the first half of 2026 when things will really start to ramp up in recruitment and training to meet demand.
The recruitment of direct entry training captains is now complete. Eleven trainers and two simulator examiners were recruited. After these pilots have completed their training, the company will commence the selection and training of internal training captain (TC) candidates. Two existing NJS captains have recently been awarded TC positions with the company likely to require about 10 – 15 more trainers operational into 2026.
First officer recruitment will commence late 2025. The company has commenced gathering expressions of interest from Qlink Dash-8 personnel. Additionally the company will implement a cadet pathway. The latter will have their ratio capped within NJS to limit low experience in the operation. A220 courses are largely filled and any vacancies in currently programmed courses will be filled by reverse seniority. Four first officers shall be upgraded mid-2025, although it was stated that this will be done as a good will gesture as they are currently not required until late 2025. Importantly for those affected, it would appear that there is now a 4 to 6 month delay with the commencement of upgrading the remaining first officer cohort starting also in late 2025.
A220 course availability vs remaining B717 pilot cohort
All crew should have been moved to iFlight on the 4th of November. As you all know, the company has elected to implement a 48 hour Special Reserve (SPRES) call out arrangement whereby crew will receive a text message in the first instance to inform them of a roster change and this will be followed up with a phone call on their first day rostered back on SPRES if they were on RDOs or leave.
Additionally, should a short notice vacancy come up on an A220 course (ie: due assigned crew sickness or unavailability), then a pilot could be given a notice period as short as 48 hours to attend the commencement of a planned course.
We felt 7 days was more reasonable, however the company is clearly attempting to encourage crew to use accrued leave if they want to be certain of time off. The arrangement will still require the use of reverse seniority for the selection of affected crew.
Base Transfers
The company reiterated that crew can rescind their base transfer EOIs any time before affected rosters are built. They also stated in this meeting that crew can change their base location bids any time for a move up until June 2025.
Advice from the company regarding salary sacrifice arrangements for those that have already moved and those that will be moving, is that NJS will recover ALL fringe benefit tax incurred by the business back from the flight crew member. This largely negates any tax benefit to the pilot. We have put to the company that they have avenues to recover this loss through company GST credits and payroll tax deductions, however the company has not advised further. Some crew are submitting the paperwork and seeing what they save on tax, but be aware that the company can recover any additional costs they incur when providing the salary sacrifice arrangement.
In any case, we recommend that financial advice is sought by members to ensure they are fully informed.
Accommodation & Transport
Following feedback from a recent online crew survey conducted by the pilot reps and presented to NJS, the company has elected to remain with the Hyatt in Canberra for our overnights there.
Although the company is attempting to limit A220 ground training overnights in Melbourne to three nights, there are still circumstances where crew are experiencing longer stays. So long as simulator and line training remains with three nights or less in the Hyatt Essendon, and as we haven’t received any complaints from crews we feel the current accommodation is suitable. The A220 Systems Review week training runs for five straight days, so that is an exception.
For training captains however, we have asked that the company investigate apartment style accommodation whereby these pilots can better manage their diet and away from home experience. During the PRF meeting, the company confirmed this will now been arranged.
Meals
As detailed above, the company is establishing a catering working committee, which will include pilot representatives to attempt to ameliorate the current offerings and suitability including international operations. Eric Galliers was once again nominated to be on this working committee however NJS are keen to use the PRF members for this purpose.
A220 FRMS Roster Protocols
We reiterated to the company that Workforce Planning need to be more hands on with regards to avoiding rostering solely to the FRMS limits (ie: minimum rest, maximum duties) and also some visible effort made to ensure crew get useful time off over multiple days off (ie: more than 55 hours over 2 days off.
Duty Travel
We pointed out to the company that middle seat allocation is still happening quite regularly. This can be sometimes rectified via the ROC, but NJS need to find a solution to ensure we have the ability to choose aisle and window seats in advance of check in. The Qantas app now allows early seat selection, however due to our classification within the booking system, we invariably can’t see all the available seats. This is one of those no cost improvements that we have been stressing upon management, but they currently seem incapable of resolving it. Having us booked under a pax category availing more seat visibility and also allowing us to board in earlier groups was reinforced.
Please continue to report any specific instances of middle seat allocations to your reps as we can continue to highlight the frequency of this to NJS.
Leave availability
Several people are finding their leave being denied due to forward planned training and checking events. This is unnecessary and we ask crew to challenge with their base managers any denied leave due to these circumstances.
Crew currently do not have visibility of available leave which ends up making the application process laborious. Availability per base numbers is quite irrelevant due to many people moving to the base of their choice. We suggested at the PRF that leave availability should be based on the total line pilot numbers across all bases. The company seemed receptive to this concept and we may see a trial started until the end of 2025 with a review mid-year to see how it is going. This arrangement is outside the provisions of the EA, however we feel it is the best solution for our current base numbers.
Further to this, training captains should be allocated leave using that cohort only and also be irrespective of base. We would appreciate feedback from existing training captains as to whether this is a desired system.
Some crew have been finding it difficult to get short period leave applications approved. We suspect this is due to the company applying QF leave policy in lieu of the provisions of our EA. We’ll watch this and follow up if crew report to us continued difficulty with these applications.
Roster bids
We pointed out that the current bid system is not really fit for purpose. The bid period is too short and without visibility of the associated pairings, crew cannot bid on specific work and expect any success. This may lead to the company publishing each roster’s pairings along with a monthly reminder of the bid period being opened. We would like to see bidding for RDOs available ahead of the relevant roster bid period as these are independent of how pairings are looked at by Workforce Planning.
We also reinforced that training captains should get priority with bidding and the ability to do so ahead of the line pilot cohort.
Canberra Captain EOI
We communicated to the company that we felt the recent CBR captain EOI was published simply to facilitate the move of a direct entry training captain from Melbourne. We also reiterated that our position on this EOI was that current CBR first officers were disadvantaged. Tony stated that this style of movement happens within industry and is not unusual when base numbers are adjusted. The discussion moved to whether this tactic might happen for other bases and we were told it would not. We argued around in circles until we agreed to disagree on whether this EOI was legitimate and even necessary under the current circumstances.
Allowance management with iFlight
At this meeting and then at the PRF meeting we discussed the convoluted process of monitoring automatic allowance allocations in iFlight. The company made it clear that iFlight is not functioning as it was sold to them. Improvements are coming, but in the meantime we suggested that they provide clearer instructions for crew regarding when to check, when to claim missing allowances, when to check for corrections and how to follow up when they are missing in any subsequent pay run.
Pilot Retention Incentive Package
Believe it or not, this came up again from NJS management! The reps all laughed and we moved on…Believe it when it hits the bank!
NJS AFAP Chair meets with new COO
On Tuesday 26th November Anthony Clouting flew down to Melbourne and along with Simon Lutton (AFAP Executive Director) met with the new NJS Chief Operating Officer, Nick Collie. Whilst primarily aimed at introductions and developing a communication pathway, the topics discussed included the poor morale and lasting effects the EBA that was unscrupulously forced upon the pilot group.
In positive news, due to strong AFAP representation in QantasLink the new NJS COO (and former QantasLink pilot) understands and is quite supportive of the AFAP process of consultation and indicated he will try and attend the next AFAP council meeting. Overall a positive first meeting!
Thanks for your involvement
If members are interested in attending any council meetings, you are very welcome. Please contact us on the email addresses below if this interests you.
Please continue to engage with your reps on all issues and if you can provide specific examples of grievances/issues experienced (including dates, flight number, leave apps) so we can collate them and provide to management – they simply won’t act on many real reported problems without supporting data.
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 Member Assistance Program (MAP) can also be accessed via Freecall 1300 307 912.