Originally Posted by
Le Chiffre
Unless the confidence to travel can quickly be restored round 2 of compulsory redundancies is a virtual certainty. If they are operating on LIFO (which has to be done very carefully in order to be legal) then anyone with under 5 years on short-haul is probably 'in the zone'.
Which would leave close to 80% of the Airbus First Officers redundant. Given how BA protected the 787 & A350 fleets due to a perceived inability to lose any pilots off the fleet and run the schedule I struggle to see how they would countenance having to fill 400+ positions on a fleet that is doing the bulk of the flying at the moment. I’m not saying that the Airbus fleet will end up classed as a “high efficiency” fleet this time around but - given the plan is to protect the LHR slots with this very aircraft - it’s a lot more likely than last time.
In short there can be absolutely zero confidence in how a theoretical Round 2 would play out. Are Balpa willing to sacrifice more pay for a bastardized version of Lifo again? We’ve taken a big hit to pay and ended up with junior pilots winning the fleet lottery (some with about a weeks service to the company when the crisis hit) being securely ring-fenced whilst mega senior SFOs on the Jumbo sit in peril in CRS. I know there were the very best of intentions behind it but was it good value trying to uphold the principle of LIFO (and paying handsomely for it) only to end up with that result?
Nobody at this point can predict what the outcome of Round 2 would be. Let’s hope and pray it doesn’t get there. As stated earlier, BA will be close to 1000 (Headcount Equivalent) off the books in 2021 compared to the beginning of 2020 pre crisis (using totals of planned retirements, VR, CR, CRS and PT). There comes a point with the economies of scale where the business cannot shrink and remain viable because it’s impossible to service the debt (see Norwegian). So the very viability of BA as a going concern is compromised if further hairdressing continues (ask a more clever accountant for the precise figure on that). But if the business doesn’t come back in short order the viability of the company is compromised for the more obvious reason. In short the company has bigger problems.