Scottie
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You wrote:
"I'm sure our colleagues in Eastern Europe are fighting for higher salaries, looking on with hope at ours and not thanking you for your defeatist attitudes. There is no reason for our salaries to go down to compete with their's. The likes of Wizz Air is already struggling, do you really think that a base at Leeds Bradford to compete with Jet2 is high on their list of priorities?!?!?"
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There's EVERY reason for our salaries to go down! An EC pilot is priced according to where he lives but his airline will be able to fly anywhere in the EC. The lowest prices will be charged by the airlines that have the cheapest workforces, and these are where the customers will go - provided of course that quality and safety are acceptable, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be.
Wizz is only an example and any financial problems are irrelevant - if they don't operate, someone else will. They don't need a LBA base or indeed any base in Western Europe, they can operate their routes from the other end.
MyTravel's big cutback is apparently due to fleet rationalisation, but there might be a hidden agenda. To cover the fleet reduction, they will need to buy in a lot of capacity and (longterm) why not use cheap airlines from Central Europe? The plan could be to minimise the central expensive airline core, ie MyTravel Airways, and maximise the outsourcing. Saves money and allows maximum flexibility. Maybe the other tour operators will follow suit?
How can Britannia etc avoid attacks on the pay and conditions? It's all very well BALPA refusing to allow them, but at the end of the day their product will be too expensive for the marketplace. And what then? A final salary pension scheme is not much use if you have no customers to pay for it.
Pilots who are accepting these appalling deals, what are they supposed to do instead? Stand on their soapboxes in the jobcentre, decrying the laws of the market place? Not surprisingly, they have to take the best that is offered and if that means paying for training, so be it - how can you blame them, they have to eat!
Scottie, I too deplore the way it's going but the law of the marketplace is fundamental and the shorthaul air travel industry is about as savage as it gets. Unless there is an EU pilot shortage, the pilot group will inevitably suffer.