Qantas has confirmed it is closing its Avalon heavy maintenance facility at the end of March 2014, resulting in the loss of around 300 jobs.
Qantas will continue to maintain aircraft at its major heavy maintenance facility in Brisbane and conduct line maintenance at 19 ports around Australia including Melbourne.
Qantas domestic chief executive officer Lyell Strambi said a comprehensive review had made clear there was no workable solution that would allow contunued operation of the sub-scale maintenance facility.
“Qantas is gradually retiring our fleet of Boeing 747 aircraft, which means there is not enough work to keep our Avalon base viable and productive,” Mr Strambi said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.
“Over the next four years there would have been up to 22 months with no scheduled maintenance at Avalon. No business could afford to continue operating a facility under those circumstances.”
Maintenance on the 747 fleet will be done elsewhere, but where that is is yet to be decided.
Mr Strambi said Qantas was the only major airline that did heavy maintenance in Australia.
“Qantas is committed to engineering and maintenance in Australia and will continue to do the vast majority of its maintenance in Australia, employing thousands of people,” he said.
“We have invested $30 million this year to upgrade our maintenance facilities in Brisbane and we will continue to do heavy maintenance on more than 110 aircraft in this facility, including our fleet of Boeing 737s, Boeing 767s and Airbus A330s.”
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The closure of the Avalon base will affect 53 Qantas employees. Qantas said it would work closely with Forstaff, which employs 246 contractors at Avalon.
Qantas would try to redeploy its staff or offer “generous” redundancy packages.
The decision follows an eight-week review into the Avalon operations.
