'No pension' was the same at RY in good times and bad - a business decision taken by any management who has started any business in the past 20 years. Defined benefit pension schemes are wonderful for those who have one (I don't), hence the favoured ones fight to keep them. Eg BA staff were asked it they wanted to keep theirs, they said yes, but, to make it affordable, BA put nearly £1bn cash in and the staff took slight benefit reductions later on to keep the deficit under control. It hasn't worked, and the pension deficit was £1.7bn in March, and will be much worse now 'cos stock markets are collapsing. So another round of haggling comes if staff want to keep their two-thirds final salary pensions - and who wouldn't? Don't even think what the unfunded public sector defined benefit pension (non-)scheme will cost us all in future years...
On the time-off, we're going into a deep recession, and RY's grounding planes over the winter because it is less loss-making than flying them, plain and simple. The planes will fly again for summer. Better times will follow in due course, everyone will go back to 900 hrs per annum. It's better than the US majors, who routinely 'furlough' (= lay off) thousands of pilots when recession arrives (Gulf Wars 1 and 2, 9/11), and it can take years before the most junior ones get rehired.
I've said this before, but RY and EZ have real financial strength - they may (and probably will) make losses in this recession, but they'll come out the other side and all the pilots will still have their jobs. I'm afraid that can't be said about all airlines - LTE the latest, and, as we go into winter, it won't be the last.