BA and Project Columbus

[VS-LHRCSA]

A lot of people here seem to think along the lines that if other airlines don't pay as much for their cabin crew, why should BA? It's not really fair to compare BA to other airlines as the nature of our flying and service is very different to many airlines. The pay is broken down into:

Basic: starts low but increases with increments (nothing wrong with rewarding your staff for loyal service)

Box payments: payments for long duties (nothing wrong with that, if I did a 14 hour shift at Sainsburys, I'd expect to be financially compensated. because of our geographic location, we fly more longer routes. bunk rest does not count, this is often allocated when you least need it)

Destination payment: payment for acknowledged 'difficult' flights (on a get-what-you're-given roster, if two crew are reporting for flights, one to Miami and one to Houston, two VERY different passenger profiles, it's fair enough to financially reward the crew member going to Miami as they are going to be working a lot harder).

Back to back payment: doing two trips in a row to increase crew productivity (these are awfully tiring, mentally and physically, so crew are financially compensated for this and given hotac)

Meal allowances: common among most long haul airlines and are paid in local currency to cover the cost of eating and drinking in the hotel downroute (fair enough, how many employers send their staff away on company duties without covering their expenses in some way)

Our closest competitor for crew patterns and routes would probably be Virgin Atlantic. From experience, their top complaints are pay and fatigue. The way I see it, if Virgin choose not to look after their crew as well as they could, why should BA crew suffer for it?

You could compare our patterns to the likes of EK and EY but their crew are given a tax free salary and housing or housing allowance, so it pretty much balances out.

Where we DO need to compromise however is on issues of flexibility. Having spent time in customer relations (ironically, one of the lowest paid jobs in the company) I have seen time and again where a cancellation could have been avoided. Lack of flexibility also cuts at crew pay and disrupts rosters, not to mention the havoc it wreaks in the operation and the costs involved. This is definitely an area where we have to be more competitive. It's not so much paying crew less but using crew better. That has to come from both sides.