Airline Affairs

Flight Engineers Strike a Body Blow for TAA:

Just when TAA was headed for an excellent 1984, industrial anarchy again raised its head in our airline industry. Industrial anarchy is perhaps not too heavy a definition in view of the fact that the Flight Engineers’ strike of last December was neither sanctioned by the ACTU, the Arbitration Commission or for that matter, any other portion of the union movement. Occurring as it did amidst the usually heavy traffic patterns of the summer holiday period, it only succeeded in losing TAA around $1Om profit (not earnings, which were considerably more) in addition to again providing the travelling public with another reason to not have confidence in travelling by air.

While in the long term the strike did settle the problem of redundancy payments to FEs who obviously are not required on the new generation of jetliners, it did in the short term throw into confusion TAA’s plans for eventual fleet re-equipment. Not helping the TM case at the time was the letter from Sir Peter Abeles to Ansell FEs guaranteeing their employment on all aircraft above 120 seats. Many of the Ansett FEs who will ultimately be superseded by new technology will no doubt opt for pilot training though Ansett still prefers an FE aboard the 767 as it feels the FE alone earns his wages by constantly monitoring and trimming fuel flow with the resultant saving of around 1 % in total sector furl burn.

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