Qantas will sack hundreds of engineers at the heavy maintenance facility it runs at Avalon, near Geelong.
Avalon will shut in March, the airline’s chief executive confirmed this morning.
The move comes as the latest blow to Victoria’s second biggest town. Geelong has this year has endured hundreds of sackings at Target, the slated closure of Ford in 2016 and uncertainty hanging over its Shell and Alcoa plants.
Qantas will sack the workers despite a last-minute attempt to save the jobs by the engineers’ association. The airline rejected their offer late last night.
Engineers at Avalon had also offered to take three months without pay next year as part of the plan. The engineers had predicted the move would have saved Qantas $14 million.
In fact, the airline revealed this morning it would cost it $28 million to close Avalon.
The engineers association’s federal secretary, Steve Purvinas, said the closure of Avalon meant Qantas was almost certain to move far more work offshore to Asia.
He said this would risk Qantas’ impeccable safety record, as work done in Asia had proved less reliable than work done at facilities like Avalon.
Qantas Domestic chief executive Lyell Strambi said the gradual retirement of the airline’s Boeing 747 fleet had made Avalon unviable.
‘‘Over the next four years there would have been up to 22 months with no scheduled maintenance at Avalon,’’ Mr Strambi said. ‘‘No business could afford to continue operating a facility under those circumstances.’’
Mr Purvinas said that the airline’s own figures showed this was not true, and that there would now be too much work to be done at the airline’s Brisbane maintenance centre.
He predicted this work would be done in Singapore, Hong Kong or the Philippines.
Mr Strambi appeared to give this off-shoring prediction credence in his statement, saying the airline would now, along with ‘‘assessing existing onshore facilities’’, examine ‘‘specialist Boeing 747 maintenance providers including in Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and United States’’.
‘‘Any facility would need to meet Qantas’ safety standards and be approved by Australia’s safety regulator,’’ Mr Strambi said.
He said that, along with the Brisbane facility, Qantas would continue to maintain aircraft at 19 other ports around Australia including Melbourne.
And he said Qantas was the only major airline that does heavy maintenance in Australia.
The 53 engineers that Qantas employs directly may be offered redeployment. It is less clear what may happen to 246 other engineers employed for Qantas at Avalon by contractors Forstaff.
