http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle3221899.ece
Extracts from full article in The Times today:
British Airways pilots use Heathrow crash as weapon in dispute
The pilots’ union will use the narrowly averted disaster last Thursday to appeal today to British Airways to abandon what it claims could be a weakening of safety standards at a new sister airline.
Minutes before a Boeing 777 crash-landed at Heathrow, the BA committee of the British Air Line Pilots Association (Balpa) had voted to hold a strike ballot among the airline’s 3,000 pilots.
The union, which is objecting to BA’s plans to create an airline with a separate body of pilots who will fly between New York and Paris or Brussels, decided to suspend the ballot to allow the airline to focus on recovering from the crash-landing.
BA has claimed that the safety standards will be the same at the new airline, OpenSkies, as at the main company.
But Balpa says that it is concerned that separate qualifications are being introduced, meaning that OpenSkies’ pilots would have to take additional courses if they wanted to transfer to British Airways.
Balpa will argue today that the crash underlined the importance of having highly trained and experienced pilots conforming to a common set of standards. BA has praised the quick actions of the pilots, John Coward and Peter Burkill, in preventing a far worse incident.
Jim McAuslan, Balpa’s general secretary, said: “If the past 72 hours haven’t changed the company’s mind, I don’t know what will. We are concerned that OpenSkies may have different standards.
“We are also concerned that, once you start outsourcing, you lose control of quality.”
Hmmm.