Originally Posted by
thetimesreader84
Our MOA says “due regard shall be made to the principle of LIFO”. It doesn’t specify chopping the bottom 350/800/1200 to make room for people to be retrained off dead fleets.
Theres also the redeployment agreement that guarantees us 12 months salary, but BALPA & BA have gone very quiet on that. Seems that some parts of the MOA (like some pilots) may be more easily disposed of than others.
But why should people not be retrained off "dead fleets"? I understand BA owns their own simulators, so the retraining cost is being vastly over-exaggerated in some people's minds. Your job title is "first officer" or "captain", not "747 first officer". The argument about making one person redundant and retraining somebody else to fulfill their role won't stand up here.
If you're going to make people redundant by fleet, it just sets another precedent for the future. The cost of retraining every pilot in the future who is bidding off 'dying' fleets to potentially secure their futures, and then having to recruit to fill those vacancies, will far outweigh the cost of retraining a few people now. Or they'll just take away the ability to bid for a new fleet in future. Either way, nobody wins long term.
It sounds like the redundancy criteria is something that should've been addressed by BALPA at an earlier stage, to ensure its fully 'legal' and compliant in the event that something like this happens. I appreciate that nobody saw this crisis coming and BA was meant to be a secure career airline, but it's in the company's interest to keep this as flexible as possible, and BALPA should've dealt with this as soon as it was clear that LIFO alone could face legal challenges.