Engineers' row dogs Air NZ

By DANIEL RIORDAN aviation writer

Air New Zealand's highly profitable engineering division risks losing business as the airline heads towards a fully fledged industrial dispute with its 1600 engineers.

The airline has been negotiating with the engineers since April and has proposed a wage freeze for a year, as it has for all its employees.

The engineers have accepted the wage freeze but they have been trying to wrestle other concessions from the company, so far unsuccessfully.

They plan to hold stopwork meetings tomorrow in Christchurch and on Friday in Auckland.

They do not believe they will reach agreement with the company before then.

They say the most likely outcome of the meetings is a ban on overtime.

Some 1100 engineers work in Auckland and 500 in Christchurch. Engineers at the airline's joint venture engineering base (shared with Pratt & Whitney) in Christchurch are covered by separate agreements and are not affected.

The engineers say that last Sunday, Qantas chose not to fly two planes to Auckland that were due for servicing, and the Australians have told Air New Zealand they will not send any more while the threat of industrial action remains.

One of the planes was a Boeing 747-400 due for a cabin reconfiguration and inflight entertainment system installation as part of a $13.5 million to $16 million contract signed between the airlines in May.

The contract involves servicing up to 15 such planes through to next March, but so far just one plane has been worked on and returned to Qantas.

The second plane, a Boeing 767, was due for a major overhaul as part of Air New Zealand's ongoing maintenance work for Qantas, say the engineers.

About a dozen such planes are due for servicing. Qantas is at present Air New Zealand's only customer in Auckland.

Air New Zealand spokesman Mark Champion confirmed that Qantas had put off sending its planes.

Qantas spokesman Michael Sharp said the 747 would be flown to Auckland on Saturday and Qantas had no plans at this stage to do anything more than defer delivery of the planes until the threat of industrial action was gone.

He was not aware of the 767's deferment.

Even if the dispute does not escalate beyond an overtime ban, overseas airlines are more likely to think twice about using Air New Zealand to service their planes, given the importance of having the work done quickly.

Certainly the work is out there. Air New Zealand's engineers have a world-class reputation and service planes for many of the world's leading airlines.

The airline has already postponed plans to advertise for 150 new engineers in Auckland in light of the industrial ructions.

Around 500 of Air New Zealand's pilots plan to strike from 4am on Friday, July 19, to 4am the following Sunday.

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