Qantas Plans Full Throttle Expansion

Aviation company wants to hire over 30,000, buy new aircraft, and build new engineering academy

Qantas chief executive officer Alan Joyce (2nd L) and chief financial officer Tino La Spina (2nd R) test out the premium economy seat for the airline's new 787-9 Dreamliner after a press conference in Sydney on Feb. 23, 2017. (WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images)

Australia’s largest domestic and international airline will hire more than 30,000 frontline workers over the next 10 years, purchase state-of-the-art aircraft and establish a new academy.

The hiring spree is considered Qantas’ most significant move to fill in the gaps after it slashed thousands of jobs during the pandemic.

The major Australian airline on March 4 revealed that it will have about 32,000 staff by 2033 compared with around 23,500 currently and create over 8,500 new high-skill jobs in Australian aviation.

This includes include 4,500 new cabin crew positions, 1,600 pilot roles, 800 engineers, and a further 1,600 in other operational positions.

Over the next 18 months, the airline is expected to increase headcount by up to 2,000 people plus replacing natural attrition.

Qantas is also preparing to boost the capabilities of its aircraft with the purchase of 299 narrow-body and 12 wide-body aircraft over the next decade.

The national carrier, which opened its first pilot academic in 2020, would also invest millions of dollars in building an engineering academy that is expected to open its doors in 2025.

The academy, which is looking to recruit about 200 new engineering students every year, would provide Qantas and the broader aviation industry with aviation engineers, defence contractors and general aviation, two areas that are highly sought after.

Qantas noted that the number of engineers retiring exceeds the current national supply of new aviation engineers each year, meaning a new training pipeline is needed.

“Aviation is so important to a country like Australia, and you need a big skills pipeline to power it. That’s not just about the major airlines but also small regional operators, defence and general aviation,” said Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce on Friday.

“It’s a whole ecosystem that pilots and engineers, in particular, make their way through, and the long-term skills base required means it relies on constant renewal.”

The Qantas boss noted that the airline ordered aircraft up to 10 years in advance, so a similarly long-term strategy should also be applied to people and the skills they need.

“In the near term, we’re gearing up to meet the growth in all of the markets we serve. We have more aircraft arriving every month, and that means we need more pilots, engineers, cabin crew and others,” he added.

“We look forward to working with the industry, training organisations, unions and governments to finalise details for the engineering academy.”

Criticised For Job Slash

The latest move came after the national airline cut 9,800 roles from its 30,000-strong workforce in the last three years. In 2020, the airline was found by the Federal Court to have illegally outsourced 1,700 baggage handlers to third-party air service providers like Dnata. Qantas is appealing the verdict.

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) said Qantas’ hiring spree won’t replace the decades of experience lost when management “used the cover of COVID-19 to gut the workforce and pay people less to do the same jobs.”

The union alleged that Qantas’ “overzealous redundancies” had resulted in the vacating of 300 of the most experienced pilots, many of whom also held check and training duties authorised by CASA.

Qantas is attempting to bring back cabin crew on lower pay and conditions than they previously had at the airline, an echo of the inferior jobs advertised in Qantas Freight shortly after illegally sacking nearly 1700 ground crew to pay people less to do the same work.

“Rebuilding aviation will take more than an announcement of inferior jobs but requires a return of experienced workers to the terms and conditions which were deliberately culled through Joyce-led management’s opportunistic approach to COVID-19," TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said in a press release on Friday.

“Unless there is a meaningful shift in ideology and strategy under a new management team, Qantas will never return to the airline it once was. The Spirit of Australia was built by workers who held sought-after careers at Qantas, but those workers are gone and jobs are now lower-paid and insecure.

‘We Made People Redundant To Survive’

But the Qantas boss defended the job slash, arguing it was a survival decision.

“We made people redundant to survive, and a lot of people left the industry anyway because there was no work for nearly three years,” Joyce told the Today Show.

“So what we’re now doing is recruiting to fill that gap and to take up the growth we’re going to have because we’re going to have a lot of new aircraft flying new routes.”

Federal Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O’Connor said Australia had the second highest labour supply shortage according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

“This is a major economic challenge. But it is also an opportunity of a lifetime for people to get the right skills for jobs that are in demand,” he said on Friday.

“Australia needs thousands of new workers and engineers to enter the aviation industry to ensure secure jobs and a thriving sector, and we welcome this investment by Qantas to help develop these future skills needs.