Air Canada plans to lay off 317 pilots
Most aircraft types to be cut, 747s grounded.
CP
Saturday, June 14, 2003
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Air Canada said yesterday it plans to lay off 317 pilots, reduce almost all of its aircraft types and ground its six Boeing 747s starting Aug. 1.
Of the pilots who will get pink slips over the next six months, 184 are based in Toronto. Sixty-one are in Vancouver, 45 in Montreal and 27 in Winnipeg.
The layoffs are to take place at a rate of 40 to 60 a month under a tentative agreement providing for $250 million a year worth of layoffs, work rule changes and other concessions the 3,100
pilots will vote on starting Friday.
"This becomes just like musical chairs now, with people getting bumped all the way down," said a senior pilot who could face a downgrade.
Now that all the 747s are being grounded, most of those pilots will probably be bumped down to Airbus A340s - requiring more than two months of costly retraining.
That, in turn, means some A340 pilots will be bumped down, also needing new training, with the bumping continuing through to pilots of small regional jets.
The so-called bid list unveiled yesterday details which pilots are now surplus. But many of those names could change in the coming weeks when federal labour arbitrator Brian Keller is expected to release a ruling on the controversial issue of how the seniority lists of Air Canada and the former Canadian Airlines should be merged.
Keller's ruling was delayed last week after union officials representing Air Canada pilots walked out of meetings with him over concerns his award would favour pilots from the former Canadian Airlines, which was taken over by Air Canada in 2000.
In the meantime, the airline is declaring which pilots are surplus based on a contentious earlier ruling by arbitrator Morton Mitchnick the Canadian pilots claim cost them an average of 9.5 years of seniority and left them severely disadvantaged.
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