The amount of money guaranteed however is less than half of the normal salary for pretty much all pilots at air berlin. So no, their pay isn't guaranteed.
Doesn't airbelrin cover the balance between the agreed salary and the statutory cap in order to stop the pilots from leaving the sinking ship?
Again, not entirely correct. Yes, there are quite a few ex LTU captains in that group, but they are not alone there by far. And they do not have better contracts than the rest of the airberlin pilots, in fact the last LTU contract is around 40% less pay than the current airberlin contract. And since airberlin has no exclusive longhaul fleet but rather only MFF (mixed fleet flying) there is no way one can fire only those old LTU guys, however, prospective buyers of parts of the company could of course cherry pick, which they cannot anymore if a normal germany procedure called Sozialauswahl (social selection) would be followed. And the sick out is only about going into that social selection procedure, which is governed by employment law.
So bottom line is that it is about one group of pilots against the other? And those on strike would rather sink the whole ship than keep it afloat if as a result the other group of pilots has better chances to get hired? I don't see how management can cave in here - if the striking pilots get their will, the majority of non-striking pilots will see their chances of employment with an investor shrinking.