Guys and Girls,
As much as it is a difficult time for all of us, no matter what airline or industry we are with at the moment, I think, for our own sanity we need to keep some level heads here.
Without pulling any punches:
1. The hold pool is about 80 - 100 strong according to the last information I had (not sure of the accuracy to be honest though).
2. Have the top 500 been asked to take "Early Retirement" or "Redundancy". There is a subtle legal difference. The reason its the top and not bottom 500 is quite simple: salary costs. This top 16% of the seniority list will be earning some comfortable cash on old, relatively inefficient for BA, contracts. If they leave then this may add an extra level of financial flexibility.
3. Airbus orders are not halting. Whether or not they are parked up is a different question.
4. The situation is definately not rosey and yes, I think we do need to be worried.
5. One main reason, in my humble opinion, we received the last email from JM slightly earlier than planned is because people may have been hassling Cranebank. They will get back to us - unless you are within a month of your hold pool expiry it wont really be of much use to be on the phone everyday asking for an update.
6. The pool has been extended once. As far as I'm aware this is unprecedented. They are keen to keep hold of "the right pilots" they identified on our round of recruitment. Obviously, situations change and personally, I think 18 months is about the limit before some form of informal chat would be required; just to check on aspirations and career state.
7. Cost of recruitment is c.£1000 per pilot. With £100k of investment sat in a pool, if I was a bean counter, I would want to hold on to that for as long as possible.
8. My best bit of advice to anyone NOT lucky enough to be in line flying at the moment: find out someway of working with the airlines/flying in general. Push yourself about to get a dispatching job, ticket desk, baggage handling, blinking anything. As long as you are working in the industry (in whatever form that may take), your committment to "the cause" will show through should any re-tread interviews happen.
Finally, there are definately troubled times ahead. The worst thing we can do is be completely pessimistic.
Chaps and Chapesses, we are all pilots. We are paid to take a pragmatic approach to problems. Lets just bear that in mind and not get too wrapped up in what may or may not happen in 6 months time: aviation is a VERY fluid industry.
BS