I see the meeting date is 18th Aug now thats for i am assuming initial consultation with pilot workforce putting forward their bids and suggestions. Now i cannot see many people volunteering for unpaid leave personally as given that most have 30 leave days left and some all their leave+5 days means they can have a week off virtually every month. This alone affords you a very nice relaxing Winter so why will anyone take the winter off unpaid when they can have a weeks paid leave each month. Being contracted out to other airlines ? well how many 737 operators in the Uk that operate classics that are short of pilots ? How many 737 classic operators are there in Europe that are short of drivers thats probably a list of erm ??? zero ... So that alone leaves pilots possibly working a 6 month contract away from the company. Surely then 18th of Aug is quite late to start talking to the pilots as that doesnt leave much time for finding of contracts, surely sooner rather than later allows people to make plans.
I see yesterday was the busiest day of the Summer so far and PM and ID were walking up and down the flightline. Now love ID/PM or hate them i see this as incredibly proactive management. If things werent going right then you had a director available to sort a problem. Personally i applaud this type of management and some will complain about it, personally i think it maintains an edge. When was the last time Willie Walsh walked down a flight line and saw the problems at first hand.
As for BALPA they arent going to fire any silver bullets, one can only hope that PM doesnt see them screwing over his company, we all have a vested interest in the company succeeding. However certain actions in the last 12 months have forced us to seek someone stood behind those who negotiate on our behalf with the legal back up. PM should see it as positive as anything agreed with a BALPA comittee usually leads to less grumbling of the pilot work force. Just on the previous point, who is actually representing us at the moment as a very important meeting is occuring 18th Aug, who are the people who are standing up and representing us. All seems a little vague following the loss of the last two ???? Be nice to have the names of our new representitives..
Financial results out this week and they are looking very promising its all a bit of a quandry at the moment, lots of profit and the talk of unpaid leave.
Sorry and finally whoever sent out that unsubstantiated text message was way wide of the mark as it had a big effect on morale that if the information was incorrect was way out of line.
So now we have KPI on your fuel cost as a crew, your sick days documented with a HR meeting what is next ? The sooner we all know the better to stop all the crew room gossip and move on.
Someone mentioned keeping it in house, couldnt agree more. However the reason it is on here is due to the lack of information being transmitted by the company what other medium do the pilots have, the uncertainty is threatening peoples families,mortgages and livelihoods.