BA's new staff travel policy from Apr.09
 

As an ex. BA staff member, I am trying to find out if the rumor is true that staff who left the company on the ERVS scheme will be eligible for concessions again from Apr 2009.

I cant access the BA intranet anymore, but if someone could have a look at ST09 Q&A and see if there is any info about what (if any) concessions we will get, I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks

15 years + ??
 

All depends on your length of service but here is the gist:

Employees with more than 15 years continuous service




To qualify for staff travel benefits after leaving BA, employees must have completed 15 years continuous service. Concessions trigger immediately from date of leaving and are available for a period equal to the number of complete years of continuous service achieved.

Reason for leaving includes: resignation; retirement; under a business initiative e.g. voluntary severance or base closure. Employees who are dismissed or who terminate during a disciplinary process are not eligible.

Employees cannot defer receipt of staff travel benefits.

Employees will immediately be eligible to the following:

• Unlimited standby on BA and other qualifying airlines
• Unlimited premium standby on BA
• Discounted commercial tickets on BA
• Annual bookable concessions based on length of service:
  - For 15 to 19 years service inclusive - 1 x annual bookable concession
  - For 20 years or more - 2 x annual bookable concessions

NB: cabin of eligibility will be the highest cabin applicable to the employee’s annual bookable concession(s) at the time of leaving

Employees with less than 15 years continuous service




Employees leaving BA under a business initiative e.g. voluntary severance or base closure, with a minimum of 6 months but less than 15 years continuous service will immediately qualify for concessions for a period of 2 years, commencing from the date of leaving.

Employees cannot defer receipt of Staff Travel benefits.

Employees will immediately be eligible to the following:

• Unlimited standby on BA
• Unlimited premium standby on BA
• Discounted commercial tickets on BA
• Annual bookable concession based on length of service

NB: cabin of eligibility will be the highest cabin applicable to the employee’s annual bookable concession(s) at the time of leaving

Thanks...

I' still non the wiser as there are different reports on different forums, some saying 10yrs service and you get your travel back for the period you served with the company...


Discussion Thread
Customer (*********) 05/09/2008 12.50 PM
An ex-collegue of mine who left BA in 1999 has asked me if he will get a bsafe password and staff travel for the 10years that he worked for BA, Can you shed some light on this please, or point me toward the relevent information which i can then show him. Thanks.

Discussion Thread
Response (Staff & Duty Travel) 10/09/2008 09.18 AM
****** - if your ex-colleauge received a letter at the time he left confirming he would re-qualify for concessions at a later stage then he will be communicated with at a later date advising how he obtains a BSAFE password. From October he will be able to register his details at http://my.baplc.com and select the link 'Not a BA staff member' then 'Register my staff travel details'. Please advise him to do this in next month.



Anyone got a number for calling :E

BA Staff Travel
 

So this begs the question what was the pre-April 09 policy? Can anybody let me know? I have an interest in this being ex-BA but have no details of the scheme post-leavving.

Number
 

Try 0844-4930764

Looking at what I wrote previously, I think this is for anyone leaving AFTER April 2009. So if you have already gone, then you may be right about the concessions you get for the years you've currently worked. I've also had a look at the FAQ's and the Staff Travel policy and can't work out what it's trying to say !

I'd ring them.

Thanks...I will give then a call.

Staff concessions
 

It is all explained in the Touchdown magazine very well. Dont you get that publication? Also you dont have to be able to access the intranet to get answers to the staff travel policy.

I dont get Touchdown...whatever that is.

And where can I get answers about the policy that isnt on the Intranet?

Gatwickba

BA changed the Policy for Staff Travel over a period of 3 years of so called "discussions" with trade unions and the BA Liasion Council - which is supposed to represent pensioners, they made those members sign a Confidentiality Agreement until the policy had been decided, and then hit already retired staff with it. And how.

BA have admitted to me that they posted FAQ's - and then answered their own questions - in the FAQ's section of the retired staff Intranet site as the ONLY way that they let the news start to flow out; many older pensioners have no access to that site, as they are not computer owners, or maybe not very computer literate, and obviously don't sign on each day. This was a deliberate plot to keep those affected most from knowing until it was too late, eventually some of the changes - but not all - were posted in Touchdown and the bad news is slowly being disseminated.

There are changes which benefit serving staff, and maybe also the very recently retired, so it is difficult to get any movement to oppose the new policy, but basically one now only qualifies for staff travel in retirement for the same length of time after retirement as one worked. Its difficult to argue against that, BUT it is being applied retrospectively....... many of us have been retired now for longer than we worked, e.g. I worked 24 yrs then took Severance at the behest of the then Chairman, and I retired 25 yrs ago so BINGO ! do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds, just p*ss off. We are being offered a sop of 5 yrs from 2009, but I personally will still be young enough to enjoy travel - or would have been until the coming of Wxxxx Wxxxx and this stitch up.

Flying Staff, who previously had to retire at 55 also miss out, for by retiring 10 yrs before someone aged 65, and having served 10 yrs. less, they effectively miss out by some 20 yrs over non-flying staff.

I am a member of a Working Group within ABAP ( Ass'n of B.A. Pensioners ) trying to get some alleviation for those of us who are being severely scr*w**d, go to www.abap.org.uk, read the webmaster's blog and the associated comments, and if you - or anyone - would like to send me an e-mail by way of a PM I'll try to reply with more detail. ( I can only refer to the new policy for retired staff, I have no access to details that affect serving staff )

There is a move afoot to fight back, but I'm not at liberty to make details public just yet, too many moles around ! but rest assured that we will not rest assured. There is worse, I haven't got time or space here.

Touchdown - is the management mouthpiece supposedly keeping in touch with BA pensioners. If you aren't in receipt of a pension you probably aren't on their mailing list. Touchdown has consistently refused to print any letters of dissent from the hundreds of affected and angry, older pensioners.

Those of you still working - you will retire yourselves one day, if they can do this, what else is in store ? :=

If I understand correctly though, if you are a retired pensioner from another airline, you can still interline on BA flights. It seems crazy to discriminate against your own staff? I guess that is the BA Way.

Hunterboy

Well said, and correct. Once removed from the Staff Travel database you will not be able to travel at all. Period. because there will be no way of your getting tickets on any of the Interline agreement airlines, but their staff will be using their Interline agreements to take your seats on BA aircraft - Nice !!

Also, surviving spouses of previous employees are to be restricted to BA flights only, again no Interline, and only Economy seating, i.e. if a Captain or Senior Staff widow now enjoys the priviliege of applying for an upgraded seat, that ceases immediately upon the death of the serving staff member ( or previous staff member ) Not a lot of serving staff know that, but that will apply to them too, 'cos a deceased staff member immediately becomes a previous employee, and so the previous employee rules immediately apply to their surviving spouse.

Join the fight, if you are not already a member of ABAP pls. join and we have a battle about to commence. ( actually you don't have to join, anyone can give support. PM me and I will e-mail you back.

They're taking our banked Long Service concessions off us to, but allowing serving staff more free trips and the ability to change their "partner" every 6 months. (?? "partner" ?? !!! )

Sevenfourseven When your airline treats you in retirement the way BA are treating us - you may (?) begin to understand. And don't say it won't happen to you. NEVER is a long time in Politics. :=

HB,

More info here

BA be fair

Thanks Beerdrinker
 

Thank you for posting the policy, looks like its 10yrs service for "Former employees", of which I am one - although not a pensioner as yet!

Cheers

I dont think the prices have actually been released yet. But when I worked for Qatar I believe the premium standbys were about double the price of the standard ones!

Hope that helps!

You can now see the exact criteria for former BA staff on www.my.baplc.com
click on "not a ba staff member" then follow the instuctions at the bottom of the page, you are given options to see if you are eligible then fill a form in with old staff number etc...

well i am really sorry but I think the new policy has some good points too. I dont quite appreciate the way you highlight the word partners! The policy quite rightly addresses the fact that as single staff have been disadvantaged for a number of years over staff who go on board with the whole families, it now puts it right! Now you are allowed two travel companions who can travel independently! They dont have to be love partners, children or anything else. You can change them every six months and I find this very fair.

Travel companions of retired staff cannot travel independently. Also the ability to change companions only applies as long as you have benefts. The worst part of the new policy is the restriction of benefits to time served (not even that, full years only and from date you because eligible, usually a year after you joined for older retireees). It is partiicularly unfair to existing retirees who expected to receive travel benefits for the rest of their lives. There is no mention in my retirement letter that benefits could be terminated, if I had any idea this could happen I might have worked longer to get more years. Also, as a previous poster noted, retireees of other airlines are not affected so they will still enjoy lifelong travel on BA due to the interline agreements. Is that fair in anyone's eyes? Current staff really need to support retirees in this battle because you never know what other benefits will be cut when you are a retiree.

r_o

Premium standby is 3 times the price of the ID90 fare. And if you do not get into the Club Cabin you do NOT get the extra two times the fare back

BD

Good job after I left BA that I joined Virgin, as I am affected by this staff travel problem. I took early retirement and helped get BA out of a problem with overstaffing. A t least I will be able to use Virgin Retired staff travel until I dont want to use Staff Travel anymore. !!!!!

I am member of ABAP. Please join if you want to have any chance of overturning this grossly unfair dictate of present management!!!!

As one of your posters says Touchdown did not publish the information until the last moment although I get the BA News and saw it in there ages before.

Retired staff group at BA seems to have done nothing to stop this.

.

Retired Staff are supposedly represented by the Retired Staff Liasion Council, who are appointed by B.A. after invitation - not elected by the retired staff.

In this case, the R.S.L.C. and all the Union reps. affected were sworn to a Confidentiality Agreement i.e. not to divulge to anyone - even the groups they were supposed to represent - what was being discussed, and eventually agreed - or dictated, take your choice.

The document was signed on 15th Nov.2007. and it was available on the staff website from about early Dec. I last printed myself a hard-copy in May 2008. On 18th October, 2008, I was advised that the document on the website had been altered, but we're not sure precisely when it was in fact altered ( you do read it every day, don't you !! ) Page 6 previously explained what had always been the case i.e. one gains an annual free trip after 20 yrs service, and 2 annual free trips after 30 yrs service.

Page 6 has now been amended - but the date still stays at 15.11.07 - and the amendment now states that for those retiring between 1.12.07 and 31.03.09, and only for that small group of beneficiaries, they will now be granted 2 free trips after only 20 yrs. I wonder why ?

Go to www.BA-be-fair.com - and read the comments as well.

Nil Illigetimum Carborundum

It is unfair on many ex staff. For those of us still at BA it is also pretty clear that this concession will continue to be reduced at due intervals. It is not only BA a number of the larger companies see the issue as too costly to run and administer. In other words for many retirees buy a commercial ticket. Many of us do that anyway or did until the loads took a downward tumble.

HZ123

It is of course worse. Once removed from the Staff Travel map, not even the participating Interline airlines will be available. Many of us live where BA fears to tread, and rely on the local airlines to get to a BA station to pick up a service that we can use. But of course the Interline airlines staff will still be able to use BA !!

In a reply to me, Manager Staff Travel has admitted that they are going to look at Interline agreements, you'll lose those next.

All the retirees ask is that we continue to be eligible for what we worked for - and in many cases were promised before accepting Severance - contractual or not.

One cannot stop change, but the retrospective application of new rules to the most elderly pensioners who are least equipped to adapt to those changes, is just plain cruel. It will cost BA nothing to 'Grandfather' the concessions that we were granted on retirement - and the ID 90 fare will help towards the 'carbon tax ', if nothing else, and we are a diminishing group as well.


Watch out. It might be your pension next. Fight back now.

pensioner staff travel
 

Please keep me informed of any assistance needed to protect our rights. I retired involutarilly in 1992. I served 26 years. I would have loved to stay as a Captain untill 2002. So it does seem unfair that my staff travel rights, that I rarely use should be curtailed in 2018. And, what about my wife who will live long after I am gone. Where is the logic. It is all on a seat available situation. Why fly with empty seats when a small charge for fuel would cost the airline nothing.
I only learned of this from entering BA staff travel into "Google". BA never told me.
Regards,
Barry Courtney
If anyone would like to contact me, Iam at( [email protected])

If you retired from BA in 1992 have you not seen all this going on in the Touchdown? As both Speedbird in NZ and I have said join ABAP and see what is happening.

My staff travel finishes in 4 years approx from now and it was supposed to be for life and for my wifes life as well - and she is 10 years younger than me. In 4 years time I have got to get friends of mine who are still elegible for staff travel to get me Hotline tickets OR believe it or not use my retired staff travel (90%) with Virgin who I worked for after BA.

It seems silly that I can still use BA through an interline agreement with BA/Virgin but I cannot use the BA staff travel that I had been assured was mine and my wifes for life when I joined BOAC/BA !!!

However, in a letter from ABAP received this week, it seems that board members past and present can have not just staff travel for life - but 1st class travel for life. W..... W..... - you are a really even handed person NOT!!!!!!

Incorrect. At yesterday's AGM it was confirmed that Board members on leaving their posts only get staff travel for as many years as they worked for BA. The only exception is for past CEOs who retain staff travel for life.
The big anomoly is the fact that other airlines retirees can, if their own airlines rules permit, retain the ability to use BA for life under the interline agreements as it would be impractical for BA to check their length of service and dates of retirement.

In reply to the poster who says staff travel in BA (along with other co's) is too costly to run, this is not correct. We book our seats online not through an office. Does this cost money - one thing it does do is actually MAKE money for BA - you would think that the concept would be embraced not be in danger of being discontinued!

Hotline tickets can be purchased as of this moment which are "commercial tickets" even this will be denied to retirees when their allotted number of years run out.

T & C

That is why it is worth keeping the minimum number of shares as the shareholder discount is the same as the basic (not special offer) hotline ie a 10% discount.

Beer drinker in Cyprus

Not a lot of people know that. What is the minimum number of shares you need for this then??? When was this published and where do I get the information.?

200 shares. That'll set you back about £260 at todays closing price, but given you'll always get at least as good a discount as a BA employee there's not much point. On the other hand if you are a frequent traveller in a premium class......

At the moment we can get Hotlines but in 4 years and 9 months with the WW in charge all that will cease as we will not have the years served rule working for us.

Pensioners are going to be severely affected then and in the future!

Go to www.BA-be-fair.com - and read the comments as well.
 

Here's what I get when I try that:
"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server."
Now what?

Cannot access ABAP or 'BA be fair'
 

That's what I get too.

Anyone know why ?

www.BA-be-fair.com etc.

Thank you for the advice of no entry to these sites, I've contacted the creator of the sites, and he is investigating.

Watch this space,

Thank you,

ExSp33db1rd

www.BA-be-fair.com and www.abap.org.uk

Back to normal.

Not sinister, BA's MI-6 dept. did not infiltrate, clerical issue by the 'owner' of the websites, apologies, and pls. keep reading and contributing, only by keeping up the pressure will there ever be any changes, I recently wrote the following to The Editor, BA News, but I doubt you will see it in print as BA News is clearly a Management mouthpiece............

How nice of BA to invite reminiscences from older former employees to help their 90th Birthday celebrations, and then with the other hand slap us across the face by throwing us out of the Staff Travel 'family'.

Yes, I used to enjoy working for BOAC more than 50 years ago.

What Nonsense
 

The website opens now - what whiny nonsense it has. Explain how the elderly pensioners "...will lose their privileges and entitlements entirely." The travel policy doesn't say that. And stop calling the staff travel an entitlement - it's NOT an entitlement. The company is prudently and wisely winding back discretionary benefits in difficult financial times. Sounds like some stupid, pampered and precious old guy is having a tantrum because he can't get it all his own way and he is seeing the world progressing beyond 1970 and he doesn't like it.

At Air Canada, all staff that worked 25 years or more get lifetime passes, and travel on a C2 status for life. It is terrible! We current employees cannot get on flights because good old granny bones who started with a some bloody predecessor airline called Beaver Air that you've never heard of, gets on with a hire date of 1959..lol I can hardly use my passes because of it. I think what BA is realising is that people are living longer, so these passes can have an impact on current employees staff travel. At AC, we are screwed basically until we are 80 years old, then we can finally get on the SYD flight..lol.

Thank God they make them retire at 65, or these old bags would work forever, hogging everything as they do. The crew check in centre at YVR: we call it Jurassic Park... where 23 years of service is considered junior!

TheOtherGuy

Quote:

---

The travel policy doesn't say that

---

Yes it does. Those who have already been retired for longer than they were employed - the new policy - are now cut off from ALL rebate travel concessions, except that we have been " graciously " granted a stay of execution to March 31st 2014 - to " Get Used To It " - their words.

Well bully for you, maybe YOU will keep your staff travel benefits well until into your '90's, as will most retiring now. Unless of course you are just a jealous outsider, conveniently forgetting any perks that your occupation might allow you ? A company car maybe ? ( a widely offered perk ) Free coal ? ( if a miner ) Cheap groceries at the Supermarket ( if you work for one ) Many examples.

I took early retirement AT THE BEHEST OF THE COMPANY in the early 80's, OK, I didn't have to, and of course there was an advantage to me AS WELL AS THE COMPANY otherwise they wouldn't have offered it, one of the 'carrots' was immediate retention of Staff Travel " concessions " - it has never been an entitlement, well understood, even tho' my retirement contract spelled out my " rebate travel entitlements in retirement " ( their words ) - and now they are welching on the deal, and applying it retrospectively.

Don't bother to reply, it's my ( and hundreds of others ) battle and I don't give a st**f for your opinion.

( PPRuNe has an " Ignore " listing I believe - will investigate )

Yaletown.

BA addressed your problem years ago, all retired staff of whatever age or previous service were given a boarding priority behind even the most junior, eligible employee. Current employees get first bite of the cherry.

Further, ones' actual date of joining after upon retirement advanced by one day each day for boarding privileges, so, for instance, I served 24 years starting in 1958, but my date of joining for boarding is 2009 minus the 24 years that I served, i.e now effectively 1985, so a retiree who started after me in 1958, but served more years, will have a higher priority than me - always.

Worth lobbying your Company ! Best of luck !

At all other North American carriers, retirees always board after active employees, so instead of a C2, they get on as a C3, as unaccompagnied partners of the employee do. I think that is quite fair. As everyone signed on for an additional 21 months at the current contract, I don't see that changing. In Canada, people don't tend to think like they do in England. Here the philosophy is 'it's all about me me me'. Disgusting I know, but the whole seniority driven system over here has created this monster. This is why as well, when you fly AC or any American carrier, you will notice only the very elderly tend to get the international flying whilst all the newer crews (up to 25 years of service..lol) tend to fly domestic routes. There is no rostering; you bid for your schedule.

Yaletown.

.

British Airways Flt. Deck Crew went for the N.Am. bidline system in the 70's, and yes, the old ( over 50 !! ) grabbed the best routes, either more allowances, better routes, or least time change (i.e.UK -Africa ) for personal convenience.

B.A.Aircrew with a compulsory retirement age of 55, until recently, retired 10 years earlier, and served 10 years less than general staff, so effectively lose out on rebate travel concessions by 20 years in comparison to others, and some, who accepted early retirment at the request of the airline, by even more.

I'm long out of it, and as this is a Cabin Crew thread I can't comment on current C.C. practice anyway, but rebate travel concessions are equal - or rather were equal - across all occupations within the airline, not now, those who spent their lives creating the once proud airline that the present staff have the privilege to work for, are being roundly screwed.