John Holland lays off 40 aircraft engineers in MEL

[David Knudsen]

From Brisbane Times: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/busi...731-2qy4n.html

John Holland lays off 40 aircraft engineers
July 31, 2013
Matt O'Sullivan
Business Reporter


The aviation business of Leighton subsidiary John Holland has laid off 40 engineers and technical staff at its largest engineering base after Virgin Australia reduced the size of its aircraft maintenance contract.

The latest job cuts are a further blow to Victoria's aircraft engineering industry, less than a year after Qantas shut its heavy maintenance base at Melbourne Airport. Qantas has previously warned that it will eventually reduce its bases for heavy aircraft maintenance in Australia from two to one.

The redundancies at John Holland Aviation Service's base at Melbourne Airport total about a tenth of its national workforce. It highlights a growing trend towards consolidation of aircraft maintenance work.

The decision to lay off engineers follows a decision by Virgin to reduce the size of its contract because its fleet of younger planes requires less maintenance than older aircraft.


Virgin's alliance partner and major shareholder, Air New Zealand, is also carrying out more of the heavy maintenance work on Virgin planes at its engineering base in Christchurch.

The John Holland contract was for maintenance of Virgin's Boeing 737 and Embraer aircraft.

John Holland, a division of Leighton Holdings, blamed the 40 job losses at its Melbourne facilities on reduced work due to "economic conditions and the high Australian dollar".

A spokeswoman said the workers would receive their full entitlements.

But the aircraft engineers' union said the latest redundancies raised concerns that John Holland would eventually consider closing the aviation division.

Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association president Paul Cousins said: "The reductions over the last six months show that John Holland is not securing any further aviation work. There is a concern that they would look to shed their aviation responsibilities."

Mr Cousins said the union had been trying to work with the local aviation industry to ensure John Holland's aviation division had a more consistent flow of maintenance work.

However, John Holland played down the concerns and said it remained the largest independent aviation maintenance business in Australia, supporting more than 80 customers. "JHAS will continue to adapt to meet the various maintenance strategies of its customer base," the spokeswoman said.

It has had six other redundancies this year.