Qantas deal with Finnair infuriates flight attendants

Qantas cabin crew have joined pilots in their opposition to the airline’s planned use of two Finnair aircraft to operate flights from Sydney to Singapore and Bangkok later this year.

Qantas cabin crew have joined pilots in their opposition to the airline’s planned use of two Finnair aircraft to operate flights from Sydney to Singapore and Bangkok later this year.

Qantas will wet lease two A330s from the Finnish carrier, which has seen its own flying curtailed by the war in Ukraine.

Under the arrangement, Finnair pilots will operate the flights, and a statement from Finnair said cabin crew would be provided by its “partners” in Singapore and Bangkok.

The Flight Attendants Association of Australia said it was originally told Finnair cabin crew were facing job losses due to reduced flying and agreed to Qantas’s request to support the plan.

But the FAAA had now learned Finnair’s “partners” are in fact Asian-based labour hire companies currently advertising for crew for the Qantas-Finnair flights.

FAAA industrial officer Steven Reed said they felt misled by Qantas and questioned why Australian cabin crew could not be used on the flights instead.

“The lack of transparency around this issue is breathtaking. We were briefed on a commercial-in-confidence basis earlier in the year and the information we were given about saving the jobs of Finnair crew is inconsistent with what’s happening in practice,” Mr Reed said.

“We thought we were doing something to assist Qantas to access more aircraft and save jobs and we find out that additional labour hire crew are being recruited in Asia to do work that should be done by Australians.”

Qantas cabin crew are upset Finnair uses a labour hire company to provide crew, including for flights being operated for the flying kangaroo.

He said crew employed through labour hire companies were typically paid less, and were subject to poorer conditions.

“Airlines around the world are driving down conditions of direct employees and offshoring their work where they can,” Mr Reed said.

The move follows Qantas’s decision to use New Zealand cabin crew on Sydney-Auckland-New York flights that began in June.

Mr Reed pointed out the NZ crew recently agreed to changes, which meant that after an 18-hour flight, they could rest for just 40 hours, instead of 50 before working again.

“It simply creates a race to the bottom,” he said.

“Flight attendants are fast becoming the coalminers of the 21st century.”

The Australian and International Pilots Association previously spoke out about the wet lease arrangement with Finnair, describing it as akin to “outsourcing”.

“Qantas’s decision to wet lease two Finnair aircraft is shocking, bitterly disappointing and could have been avoided with more effective management decisions,” AIPA president Tony Lucas said.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the flying on the Finnair aircraft was “never going to be done by Qantas cabin crew for the first two years and we’ve been very upfront about that”.

“But it will be done by Qantas crew for the following two years and we believed the FAAA chose not to oppose the overall deal for that reason.

“If the FAAA’s position is that Qantas partners aren’t allowed to source labour as they see fit, that feels a bit like overreach.”

Since borders reopened and travel restarted, Qantas has recruited more than 2400 pilots and cabin crew and is continuing to train and recruit another 1000-plus.

Once the two-year wet lease deal ended, Qantas would use its own pilots and crew to operate the Finnair A330s, which would create about 184 jobs.