Qantas pilots approaching 65 cry foul on redundancy payouts

Qantas is under fire from its most senior pilots over what they perceive to be unequal treatment.

Qantas pilots in much days, preparing for the second Project Sunrise test flight from London to Sydney in November 2019.

Qantas is under fire from its most senior pilots over what they perceive to be unequal treatment under a redundancy scheme to shrink the airline’s workforce by 6000 staff.

Pilots approaching 65 have been told they do not qualify for redundancy payouts because they would be retiring before long-haul international travel resumes.

It means about 60 ­pilots will leave with an “early ­retirement” package of three to four months’ pay, while others who take redundancy will ­receive up to 12 months’ pay.

A Qantas pilot who spoke to The Australian on the condition of anonymity said it seemed a shabby way to treat people who had worked for the airline for 35 years or more.

“We’ve been told if you turn 65 prior to July 1, 2022, you don’t qualify for redundancy,” the pilot said. “Our legal advice is that it is not age discrimination, but it certainly feels that way.”

He said the only alternative was to remain stood down on the JobKeeper allowance of $1500 a fortnight, and have their leave entitlements continue to accrue until they reached 65, the age at which all international pilots are required to retire.

The expressions-of-interest period for voluntary redundancies closed on Friday but Qantas would not say if it had reached its target of about 200 pilots.

Pilots have been among the hardest hit by the COVID crisis due to the massive reduction in flying and the uncertainty surrounding the resumption of international routes.

Qantas does not expect long-haul flights to return to pre-COVID levels until 2023-24, and has taken the decision to park its A380s in the California desert until that time. Many of the airline’s newest aircraft, Boeing 787s, are also heading to Victorville in the US to be stored for up to 12 months in a sign of the gloomy short-term outlook for overseas travel.

A Qantas spokesman said the 787s, all of which were under three years old, were among about 100 aircraft identified as surplus to needs for the next year.

“We’ll keep some in Australia as contingency aircraft,” he said of the 11 787s in the Qantas fleet. “We expect the 787s to be the first aircraft to return to service when long-haul inter­national travel returns, so the rest will come back to Australia when the time is right.”

He said conditions in California were better suited to the long-term storage of aircraft than Australia’s Red Centre where many Southeast Asian airlines were parking their planes.

“The humidity in California is much lower than in Australia,” he said. “All of the aircraft will be looked after by our Los Angeles-based engineering team.”

Meteorological data showed the average humidity in the ­Mojave Desert was between 10 and 30 per cent, compared to 24 per cent in Alice Springs.