letter from alan joyce, page-11

If Joyce thinks that there will be no more aircraft grounded and no flight cancellations, he lives in a Gaga land.

Licensed Aircraft Engineers do decide if aircraft is going to fly or not. If they do not sign maintenance release, aircraft does not go.
All it takes that LAME's work as per procedures, being extra scrupulous with their checks and defect clearance.

Same tactics were employed in 2008, where there was a parking lot full of planes waiting for this part or that.

Pilots will react with supper extra caution to any minor problem, they notice in the cockpit. Every flicker of a lamp in an indicator or annunciator light will be diligently recorded and reported for thorough investigation of engineers.

I was recently on an international Qantas flight where just such action took place. First the flight with aircraft at the gate was delayed by crew concerns about cockpit indications to the point Qantas was going to fly a replacement aircraft from Melbourne. Then finally crew and engineers decided plane was OK and departed 2 hours late. Flight went without an incident except that 1 hour into the flight it was decided to shut down and restart the flight entertainment system for some problems that nobody I could see was experiencing, It took half an hour to restart, it also disabled the overhead personal reading light and electric chairs in business class that use the electrical control switches, rather than the mechanical system as in
economy class.

Then on arrival to the first destination crew experienced another difficulty, this time in starting the auxiliary electrical power and so the passengers experienced another ten minutes delay, waiting for external power to be connected before the doors could be opened.
Interestingly, second stage of the flight experienced no such problems at all.

Many passengers missed their connecting flights, on Qantas and other airlines. Just this one flight must have cause financial losses to the company it would not normally incur and gave an impression of Qantas as an airline with aircraft in poor condition.

I have no doubt that this goes on day after day, even with industrial action officially halted. There is 21 days for talks between the warring parties which can be extended for another 21 days if some progress has been made until compulsory arbitration by Fair Works takes place.

I am sure Qantas will be bleeding money in the meantime and maybw beyond.
No matter how many millions you pay the management, they can not fly the planes or fix their problems. They need their staff on side, preferably enthusiastic, certainly not disgruntled.