McKeen said general aviation career paths had been forced to shift in recent years.

“The training pathway or the pilot pathway in New Zealand has traditionally been you either from school go and decide to be an Air Force pilot … or you go and self-fund.”

Pilots traditionally then gained experience on small piston aircraft as Part 135 operators.

“There’s been a significant reduction in those numbers of operators,” McKeen told the Herald.

“It’s not necessarily that our pilots are going offshore for the bigger money. It’s the fact that there are simply no jobs to build the hours here necessary to move on to the next step.”

There were fewer small operators now employing people straight out of flying schools, McKeen added.

“So that’s the biggest challenge I think we have as a country at the moment, to retain New Zealand pilots flying New Zealand aircraft for New Zealand airlines.

“If you go to Australia and you’ve done three, four years in Australia, you’re ready, you’ve got the local experience to easily slide into Qantas, for example.

“Once you head overseas and you start flying overseas, that opens up opportunities overseas that wouldn’t necessarily have been as easy in New Zealand.”

So what’s the solution?

“Air New Zealand’s recent cadetship programme is one part of a solution providing a very clear pathway from school into becoming a commercial pilot but that’s only ever going to be a small number, or comparatively small number,” McKeen said.

“The solution in my mind is that the industry needs to get together and create a more clear and solid sort of access through to experience with the instructors.”

But that required a collaborative industry-wide approach in what had often been a competitive area.

Jim Collins’ legacy

Robinson said a lot of members had not seen each other in a long time.

He said the 80th anniversary event would feature numerous international guests and also commemorate Erebus pilot Jim Collins and his career.

Previous recipients of the Jim Collins Memorial Award include Justice Peter Mahon, whose inquiry exonerated pilots of wrongdoing in the Erebus disaster, and Christchurch air traffic controllers for their courage during the 2011 earthquake.

Robinson said Collins’ family were involved in the award.

The award was not bestowed every year and was designed to recognise people who made major contributions to aviation safety.

McKeen said the NZALPA was often focused on advocacy around technical, safety and welfare areas.

He said members felt the cost-of-living and inflation impacts other workers had in recent years.

“The industrial stuff takes take care of itself to a certain degree, so there’s initiatives that we are working on at the moment with CAA [the Civil Aviation Authority], a programme called Safe Haven.”

The Civil Aviation Authority has said Safe Haven created a new, separate space for participants to report on, and improve, their health.

The CAA has acknowledged many pilot participants fundamentally distrusted the existing reporting process, so Safe Haven could address that.

McKeen added: “I wouldn’t say there’s a there’s a huge negative interaction with with any of the employee groups, really. We’ve made a deliberate shift to work as collaboratively as we can with them.”

Members

McKeen said the NZALPA had slightly more than 2500 members, including about 450 air traffic controllers.

Of commercial pilot members, about 1600 were with Air New Zealand.

After that, Airways New Zealand air traffic controllers were the biggest employee group, then pilots from Qantas and its subsidiary Jetstar in New Zealand.

Smaller airlines, freight companies, helicopter operators and flying schools also had members.

McKeen said pilots with smaller companies might actually interact with their peers more than those at big airlines did.

Pilots with big airlines might not fly with the same colleague for many months.

“When you’re working in that smaller part of the industry … you know everyone that you’re working with really well.”

But McKeen said staff at small organisations did not always have the same protections as those at big airlines.

He said the NZALPA tried to assist with technical, safety, advocacy and mentoring tasks.

“Some of these smaller operators are struggling.”

Regional airlines

McKeen said the regional airline business in New Zealand had always been challenging.

Air Chathams in April said it was considering withdrawing its Whakatāne to Auckland route after losing more than $1 million on it in the previous two years.

And Sounds Air chief executive Andrew Crawford recently told RNZ his airline had to ditch its Taupō and Westport routes and sell an aircraft.

McKeen said it was not always viable or appropriate for the NZALPA to advocate or lobby for airlines, and regional carrier needs might sometimes be at odds with theneeds of other employers.

“We’re not a business advocacy group. That’s not to say that we don’t have a keen interest in how our businesses are run and how successful they are.

“I don’t think you would necessarily see us out fronting a big push for Chatham to receive funding.”

But it could potentially support an industry-wide approach on such an issue.

India crash

The anniversary gala event occurs six days after the fatal Air India Flight 171 crash in Hyderabad.

“There is a group of Indian pilots coming down doing their training and then going back so there definitely will be people with connections,” McKeen said.

And some airlines overseas have recently had to reroute flights due to the Israel-Iran attacks.

But McKeen said New Zealand pilots and the NZALPA were unlikely to be affected unless the conflict zone widened.

John Weekes is a business journalist covering aviation and courts. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.