Boeing 7E7
Certainly.
Balpa sold nobody out. When they became involved officially in the negotiations (circa Oct) the offer on the table was dreadful.
The final agreement in Feb, following a genuine threat of industrial action and the personal intervention of the General Secretary, was far from perfect but heaps better than what would have been IMPOSED had nothing been done.
The agreement for pilots aged over 60 is part of an on-going international matter and the subject of an exceedingly long debate here on PPrune. It's totally unfair to single out this issue in the negotiations. This battle still rages on, supported by 26 Balpa company councils around the country, and is far from unique at EZ.
The reference to 'chief negotiator' is, I assume, the Chairman of the council. He is indeed over 60 and has just - as was his stated aim 3 months ago when new council elections took place - stood down. He stayed in post for a couple of extra months to help 'see in' new council members.
The other 5 members of the council involved in the last negotiated agreement have not resigned. 2 of the guys directly involved in all last year's talks are actively involved still in negotiations directly affecting rostering, crewing and FTL matters. Another remains as the current vice chair. 3 new council members were elcted in June.
The intercepted Athens flight - which was widely reported on PPrune - involved an aircraft where the No 1 VHF had developed a rather strange problem in that it randomly changed frequency.
The crew didn't notice that they were off frequency and had consequently failed to respond to a number of ATC calls. THEY WERE NOT ASLEEP. SOPs were changed to include the required monitoring of 121.5 on VHF2 as a result. If they HAD been asleep, the SOP would now reflect the mandatory use of an alarm clock!
I don't know of 3 similar incidents, but 2 other R/T related incidents did involve the same airframe - one of which I was flying!
The technical prob was eventually solved after considerable engineering investigation (blue wire had a cold or something!)
I have no idea what RWs pay rise is this year so that might be right.
If it is 300% I would say that's taking the pi$$!