Our BALPA reps also had to fight off an attempt to impose a totally inappropriate sickness policy on the pilots. It had been cobbled together as a generic policy to tackle percieved sickness issues amongst another group of staff in another part of the company (something to do with Wimbledon fortnight I believe). The reps asked for statistics from HR and when they eventually appeared, even alowing for two or three days off not flying due to colds (as per the ANO), pilot sickness levels were well below national all industry averages and well below the company average. The highest sickness levels were in the HR department. Probably wearing themselves out worrying about imposing pointless policies and trying to win futile battels with BALPA reps.
The reps also had to waste a lot of time attempting to explain to the HR people that pilot sickness averages looked higher than would be expected because as in all airlines a small number of pilots were on long term sick grounded by the CAA.
Some were perfectly well to work on the ground doing project work, but the company chose to keep them at home so that their sick pay ran out more quickly. Once long term grounding sickness figures were taken out of the equation, the pilot sickness levels were extremely low.
Generally, pilots just dont go sick unless they really have to. It probably has something to do with underlying professionalism and not wanting to drop collegues in it and I can''t imagine it is any different at VA.
Even if VA pilot sicness levels are higher, this is probably just down to the nature of a Longhaul only opearation and the last minute need to withdraw from trips at the onset of an illness.