Qantas to play tough on ‘Sunrise project’ pilots deal

Qantas will shelve plans to fly direct from east coast to NY, London and Paris if a new pilot agreement is not reached.

Alan Joyce with a refurbished Qantas A380 in Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: David Swift

Qantas boss Alan Joyce has warned he will shelve the airline’s ambitious Project Sunrise if a new agreement is not reached with pilots to operate the ultra-long-haul flights by the end of the year.

During the unveiling of the first refurbished A380 in Sydney on Wednesday, Mr Joyce said negotiations with pilots should not take months or years.

“It’s not Brexit,” he said. “We are hoping to have a good dialogue with them but we can’t put an order in for a new aircraft unless we know the business case is going to meet the thresholds.”

Qantas’s firm stance on such issues was why the airline was in “the great position it is today”.

“We are going to have a hard nose on this,” said Mr Joyce of the planned non-stop flights from Australia’s east coast to cities such as New York, London and Paris. “It’s a very exciting project but it is not too big to fail and if we don’t have a business case we won’t do it because that’s what our shareholders expect.”

There were other projects Qantas could invest its money in, such as the booming loyalty program, Mr Joyce said. “We could invest our money quite well in that business to grow our earnings even further. We will be very disciplined on this,” he said.

Asked what he was seeking from pilots, Mr Joyce said he wanted to see similar productivity gains to those agreed to when the Boeing 787s were introduced. “(Such as) how the aircraft can be operated, what are called night credits and how they’re applied (and) the flexibility of moving people around aircraft,” he said. “There are a lot of little items that can all add up to a significant cost to us if we don’t get them bedded down before we get an agreement.”

The Australian and International Pilots Association has indicated it would be challenging to meet the end-of-year deadline but did not wish to comment while negotiations were continuing.

Qantas will go ahead with a series of test flights using mostly empty Boeing 787-9s, with the first, from New York to Sydney, to take place in a fortnight. Mr Joyce said he would be on board that flight, and another next month from London to Sydney.

“It’s important you demonstrate you’re willing to do it,” he said. “It’s a very big occasion in aviation and the world is going to be watching.”

He would not be involved in scientific experiments to test how pilots and passengers coped with the ultra-long flight.

“We’ve got … equipment that monitors brainwaves and the (scientists) said ‘you might want to try it on the flight’,” Mr Joyce said. “My PA said ‘no one wants to see what’s in your brain Alan’.”