"collapse" here not referring to Chapter-11: this is a comment about the state of morale and capability in crewing, not financials.
The staff in the tubes feel they are near collapse: there is no spare capacity for cabin staff, they are forced to work during what would normally be on-call but off-duty periods, the workload is causing them to wind up out of their home location in mandatory rest windows and the rostering systems are breaking down because even if bodies are available, they are in the wrong location to crew the airplane.
The article doesn't say flight deck crew. Nor does it go to safety and type certification for flight crew. The safety certification they are talking about is re-certification as cabin crew. This is vital work, but its not flight systems work, its other safety roles than piloting.
There is a lot broken in flying these days. They sacked (sorry furloughed, some other euphemism is needed here) far too many staff including ground staff, even licenced engineers, and now have no slack capacity to deal with the simultaneous burden of everyone wanting to travel again, bringing aircraft out of hibernation, crewing under covid, increased flu, and what Alan Joyce, the CEO of QANTAS likes to call "less than flight ready passengers" although blaming your customer for what is transparently your own decision to sack all ground staff and use 3rd party agents is a bit "rich" coming from a man who gets $100m in share option value this year alone.
Alan Joyce did say on business TV channels that cancellations of flights was a move to boost flight prices BTW [1].
Which is also a bit "richer" with what you outlined at the end. My personal opinion is that Qantas is also doing it tough operationally. Airlines have a lot of rules in regards to how long crew can operate with out a break. And they must follow them [2].
[1] Seen as a segment on The Gruen on the ABC (Australia).
[2] Used to work for a company that wrote solvers for crew rosters years ago.
We booked four flights for the weekend before the fourth, outbound from the east coast to the Midwest, plus returns. Of those, American Airlines cancelled two. Fortunately, one party had rebooked on an earlier return flight.
The staff in the tubes feel they are near collapse: there is no spare capacity for cabin staff, they are forced to work during what would normally be on-call but off-duty periods, the workload is causing them to wind up out of their home location in mandatory rest windows and the rostering systems are breaking down because even if bodies are available, they are in the wrong location to crew the airplane.
The article doesn't say flight deck crew. Nor does it go to safety and type certification for flight crew. The safety certification they are talking about is re-certification as cabin crew. This is vital work, but its not flight systems work, its other safety roles than piloting.
There is a lot broken in flying these days. They sacked (sorry furloughed, some other euphemism is needed here) far too many staff including ground staff, even licenced engineers, and now have no slack capacity to deal with the simultaneous burden of everyone wanting to travel again, bringing aircraft out of hibernation, crewing under covid, increased flu, and what Alan Joyce, the CEO of QANTAS likes to call "less than flight ready passengers" although blaming your customer for what is transparently your own decision to sack all ground staff and use 3rd party agents is a bit "rich" coming from a man who gets $100m in share option value this year alone.