'Princess' pilot email lands in Senate
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 1, 2011
JETSTAR'S chief executive has dismissed as "banter" a disparaging email from one of its captains telling fatigued pilots to "toughen up princesses".The leaked email landed like lead when Nick Xenophon tabled it as part of the Senate's inquiry into airline safety.Pilots' complaints about fatigue from long shifts and night flying were bluntly dismissed. "You aren't fatigued, you are tired and can't be bothered going to work," the captain wrote.Senator Xenophon told the inquiry it was written by a pilot managing rostering in Jetstar's Perth base - a description Jetstar later said was incorrect as he was a regular captain, not a "management pilot".Qantas's chief executive, Alan Joyce, and Jetstar's chief executive, Bruce Buchanan, were surprised when Senator Xenophon handed them the email.They said they had not seen it before and expressed surprise that any complaint had not been raised by concerned staff using the airlines' internal safety reporting systems or the airlines' externally administered whistleblower forum or with industry regulators."It's very hard for the management here that has just received, to be given notes, on the spur of the moment, when these things can go through a proper investigation," Mr Joyce said."If someone has done something wrong ... that will be dealt with, that will be stopped, and we'll make sure that doesn't happen again."Mr Joyce warned the Senate inquiry might become a store of damaging allegations."There's a potential here for a warehouse of information and accusations and material to be compiled and accumulated against the airlines," he said.A Jetstar flight attendant, Monique Neeteson-Lemkes, also appeared before the inquiry.She said fatigue issues extended to cabin crew. Cabin crew were not covered by fatigue rules like pilots, and Ms Neeteson-Lemkes said morale was "very low" at Jetstar. "I would say it is a very toxic workplace at the moment." She said cabin crew were "quite fearful of using the word fatigue".After inquiry proceedings closed Mr Buchanan called the email "banter" between a group of pilots. "It doesn't represent the views of Jetstar."The inquiry was being "hijacked for political means, or for a union agenda", he said.But Senator Xenophon said it was concerning that pilots would rather speak to him, and table documents at a Senate inquiry, than approach their bosses.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
