Air force and Qantas to share a pool of pilots Charles Miranda November 26, 2008 11:00pm THE nation's fighter planes and Qantas aircraft will be crewed by a shared pool of pilots under a plan to combat a shortage of military manpower. 'The Courier-Mail has learned the blueprint for the future of Australia's military seeks to establish a sharing of commercial personnel with a compatible skills-set to stop each operation poaching from the other. Under new arrangements being considered by the Federal Government, the pool of pilots also will be able to travel freely between the public and private sectors. The move is aimed at addressing a series of damning internal audits that show fighter planes and pilots are not meeting basic flight hours due to a lack of ground and air personnel. The audits reveal a similar shortfall in the Royal Australian Navy. "We've got to ask ourselves, together in partnership with Qantas, whether we are getting maximum utilisation out of a limited number of people available," Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said. Speaking exclusively to The Courier-Mail as he toured a military dock in Spain, where the RAN's hybrid aircraft carrier was being built, Mr Fitzgibbon said the nation's population was too small to sustain public and private industry. It is understood the Defence White Paper, which charts the defence forces to 2030 and is due out next year, also gives military reservists a more central role and provides "family friendly" incentives to retain staff. Mr Fitzgibbon confirmed he had ordered service chiefs to look at policies "so that when a family is sitting around the kitchen table considering whether or not to take an offer outside the (military) service we can put things on the table that might encourage them to stay".
November 26, 2008 11:00pm
THE nation's fighter planes and Qantas aircraft will be crewed by a shared pool of pilots under a plan to combat a shortage of military manpower.
