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Update: Via ABC News.

Qantas pushes for visa extensions, more foreign pilots amid critical staff shortage

By Kelly Fuller
Posted Thu at 1:18pmThu 29 Mar 2018, 1:18pm


Photo: Qantas is asking the Federal Government to allow foreign pilots to extend their visas to solve critical pilot shortage (Mark Baker: Reuters)
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Qantas is asking the Federal Government to allow foreign pilots to stay in Australia longer to deal with a critical pilot shortage.

The airline has been under intense pressure in regional centres after revealing it was cutting back fights in a number of cities as a result of the scarcity of pilots.

QantasLink's John Gissing said the airline had applied to the Government to allow in additional pilots and simulator instructors on visas beyond the existing two-year window permitted under the current skilled visa program.

He said the airline would need up to 75 additional pilots and instructors in the first year and up to 55 each year for the next five years.

The airline will target pilots from the US, Canada, and the UK to fly the Q400 used on the regional routes.

Bring Australian pilots home, union says

The Australian and International Pilots Association President, Captain Murray Butt, said bringing in more foreign pilots would be a bad outcome for Australian pilots.

He said now there was upward pressure on the labour market, the airline was opting to go overseas rather than paying local pilots more.

"The problem we foresee with the approach that the Qantas group is taking is that rather than allow any pressure on wages, and allow the packages that they are offering people to get interested in these sort of jobs, their solution is to sell off Australian residency."

Captain Murray said there were enough graduates and pilots who were working overseas and would like to come back home to meet the demand Qantas had identified.

He said pilots association would seek more information from the airline and reach out to both sides of politics to help them understand the consequences of the Qantas proposal.

Aviation expert Neil Hansford said the pilot shortage showed a lack of foresight from all Australian airlines, and doubted the push would get support from the government.

"I don't think they are going to get too much traction to get these 457 visas past two years," Mr Hansford said.

"Qantas has got to get off the bike and start these training facilities now because there is commercial training capacity in the country to cover the 75 they are looking for."

Photo: A QantasLink plane lands at a regional airport in NSW (ABC News: Jennifer Ingall)

Training new pilots

Qantas is still pushing ahead with plans for a pilot training academy to be based in regional Australia by 2019.

More than 10,000 hopeful pilots have registered their interest to sign up to the academy.

The airline is working through state governments to contact regional cities to quickly find out which regional airports could support the academy and pilot training school.

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