GSS contract with BA terminated

[onehotflyer]

I had never heard of IPA until now but I will have a look.

[4468]

So it all comes down to just name calling then, because nobody is prepared to respond to my post #98:

Quote:
GSS never pretended they were BA
Quote:
GSS flew BA liveried aircraft for 12 years
Mmmmmm

Quote:
BA have effectively ended my and many other's careers by walking away from a five year contract after two years without any notice and exporting British jobs to the Middle East.

Yet you refuse to accept that BA effectively 'exported' BA pilot jobs to GSS to allow YOU to take them?

Hypocritical?

Who's jobs are they exactly????

Finally. What on earth does the BA secondee situation have to do with recent developments between GSS and International Airlines Group??? Or will you be carrying that particular cross all the way to the grave?

So you have no rational argument. Just your own bitter prejudice!

I don't like to see anyone lose their jobs. Just don't expect juvenile mud slinging to go unchallenged.

[onehotflyer]

You may get a response if we could figure out what you asking.
GSS was only in BA colours the last 2 years. I imagine only because of the -8 and probably a BA idea rather than GSS.
BA does not have cargo planes so no we were not taking BA jobs. Anyway, BA jobs or not, now the Arabs have them and that's a blow for the European job situation. Engineers, loadmasters, taxi drivers, caterers etc etc are also all out of work.

[Flightmech]

Good point form onehotflyer but 4468 wont listen. He only has one opinion and that's always his own. Typical Nigel

[JW411]

I don't know if some of you realise it, but 4468 was the registration of the LNER A4 "Mallard" steam engine which produced more hot air and steam than any other locomotive and holds some sort of pre-war railway speed record.

Our 4468 is a typical pompous BA ar*e who gives the impression that he can barely find it possible to walk past a mirror without his hat on.

On the other hand, I and several others, tried to train a gentleman some years ago and we all, without fail, had to admit defeat.

He joined GSS and it is my great hope that if he is still there, he is never allowed to go near another flying machine ever again.

[mover625]

4466 vs the rest

4466 seems to misunderstand the nature of cargo contracts and why it's necessary for BA to have a cargo aircraft operation at all.

When an airline bids for a cargo contract with a consolidator (Stenna or Maersk for example) it has to contract for the whole consignment and that will inevitably include items that are too big for pax aircraft belly holds and also cargo aircraft only goods.
BA and several other large pax operators hand this 'awkward' cargo to companies like Atlas (who operate for Emirates amongst others) and GSS for BA.

BA mainline rates of pay would make an in-house cargo operation uncompetitive hence the outsourcing.

As to whose jobs they are it's simply a matter of economics and, although BA pilots are mostly insulated from the outside world, having worked for BA for 35 years and GSS for 7 it was enlightening to me to see how lucky I had been to be cosseted by BA for most of my career.

4466 should count his blessings.

[4468]

4466 should count his blessings.

Oh I do, I do.

Every time I strap on the jet, I count my blessings that I had the gumption to apply for BA, and that I worked damned hard to pass the interview.

BA pilots are mostly insulated from the outside world, having worked for BA for 35 years and GSS for 7 it was enlightening to me to see how lucky I had been to be cosseted by BA for most of my career.

Oh I absolutely agree. Hamble guys such as you, absolutely have little idea just how lucky they were/are! We still have similar guys in BA. Lots of them. However since I have had extensive flying experience with two other employers prior to my time in BA, I thankfully don't fall into your bracket. Of course BA is far closer to market rate these days, both in terms of pay and productivity, so your comment is largely moot. But having been so long out of the loop you can't be expected to know that your halcyon days have long since passed.

BA mainline rates of pay would make an in-house cargo operation uncompetitive hence the outsourcing.

Possibly. But of course secondees were not paid anything like mainline rates. Which is why they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the sad demise of the contract between GSS and International Airlines Group! The time for debating secondees is long since passed.

Had I been flying for GSS, I would be far more interested in why the rate of pay for flying a 744/8 was no better than for many UK turbo prop jobs. That my friend is precisely where YOU come in! People who simply can't manage to retire on six figure pensions completely skew the market rate for 'ego' jobs such as these! So you see it's people like you who were the real enemy to decent T&Cs. Not the secondees!

But as you rightly say. It all comes down to economics in the end, and the customer has the absolute right to take their business wherever they like. It's little different to shopping in the high street. If you can't differentiate on quality, the only thing left is price!

JW411

Well done. You can use Google! 4468 is still the world speed record holder. A true superlative!

[zeddb]

In all my days in aviation, (20 years up to now) I have never come across anyone quite so pleased with him or possibly herself as old puffing billy here.

The ex BA guys were/are in the same boat as the rest of us, the secondees all have jobs and in some cases commands to go back to. There was never any question of their future being in any danger whatsoever and despite that they were pretty much all decent guys and have had the self awareness not to rub it in since the announcement.Unlike arrogant little Hitlers like you. The secondees were parachuted into direct entry commands that would have otherwise gone to GSS employees. The ex BA chaps that you so arrogantly dismiss had to join the queue like everyone else. How that made them any 'danger' to the rest of us is nonsense. Not everyone lives a blameless and perfect life like you so obviously do and there are such things as divorce and maybe not being in the BA pension scheme for 40 years, things that you in your little bubble will obviously never suffer as you are so bloody perfect.

As for "working hard" to pass BA selection, utter bollocks. You were fortunate enough to have filled in the form on the right day so that you happened to fit the profile that the outsourced firm that screens them were looking for that afternoon. You simply had the chance that others who fell outside of whatever prescription was in force that day did not. Any number of people could be in your place today, you just got lucky, so whoopee **** for you. You are no better than the rest of us, you just seem to think you are.

I never undertook selection for BA, did you possibly get turned down for GSS? You certainly seem to have a right old downer on us.

Just pray that this never happens to you. If it suited BA to outsource all of their flying to Emirates or Qatar or anyone else they would do so. They would close down and restart the next morning under different management and you lot would be out on your ears. BALPA would be able to do precisely F**k all apart from hide in a cupboard and crap on about their tremendous financial services and nice glossy magazine. So think on, you probably believe that you are bulletproof on top of your little pedestal. Take it from a battle scarred survivor of this wretched business, you are most certainly not.

[Wireless]

I don't think there's any UK turbo prop jobs that pay a 45k a year basic year 1 for an FO. One appealling thing about GSS is they recognised experience. Good old fashioned entry requirements. No CTC/ Oxford trainees in sight (that's a dirty word on here these days ). I just hope VS carry on with their old fashioned entry requirements and don't develop a taste for the trainee only route otherwise my other aspirational airline to work towards would be out :-(.

[Charlie Pop]

It's a great shame GSS has gone down the swanny, I know a couple of good guys flying there who will now be facing an uncertain future. I'm very glad I'm not in their position. But lets take an honest look at things here. GSS was not a 'career' airline; it was barely an airline in it's own right at all. It existed as the b*st*rd child of Atlas and BA World Cargo, it's genesis was an attempt to circumvent UK employment laws and the scope clause of BA pilots and the only reason there are any UK pilots flying that work at all is because BALPA kicked up a stink about Americans flying it. From that ignoble beginning came an almighty stink from BA pilots about the blatant scope-busting attempt from BA. The outcome of that was that the only way in which BA were going to be able to outsource the flying was to give some of the P1 positions to BA secondees. It wasn't a case of 'ES should have resisted', or 'BA pilots stole my command'. Without the secondees there'd be no GSS, no GSS commands and no GSS employment at all. That's the long and short of it. It simply wasn't worth BA's while to get into a fight once their transatlantic scopebusting plan started to come off the rails.

If GSS management had aspirations to make the company anything more than a flunky for BAWC they'd have smelled the coffee when IAG took over and found additional sources of business.

People say that BALPA should have intervened to stop the secondees, but frankly thats like saying BALPA should intervene to improve access to 'pay to fly', or should promote a race to the bottom. I'm no fan of BALPA but even I can see that they can hardly be expected to fight for the right to outsource and undercut the work of incumbent UK pilots of any airline. As for BALPA Financial Services, I'm really rather perplexed what the relevance of that is to anything, pretty much anyone and everyone uses somebody else.

I've every sympathy for the plight of the GSS guys but the 'arrogant cossetted BA silver spoon w*nkers' is a cracked record. Everybody's heard it before and it's well known the accusations only come from a certain small section of the industry. The pilots of Easyjet, Thomson, Ryanair, Virgin, Monarch et al don't have that particular chip on their shoulders. If ranting and raving is cathartic and makes somebody feel better then so be it, but there's only so much scope for ranting before you start to look crazy.

[Wireless]

Fair enough. My apologies. I did want to work there if I could.

I'd like to be in a position to apply to a career airline like your your own BA, but BA have gone newbies only. GSS were one of 3 jet companies left in GB to apply to with experience and an unfashionable type rating. They offered a full time contract too and were a friendly decent bunch I heard on the network.

[mover625]

Thanks zeddb, you've saved me the trouble of replying to 4466's rather patronising reply who for some curious reason considers himself to be my friend - at least that how he addressed me in his reply to my post.
As to his assertion that the ex BA pilots were responsible for depressing the T&Cs at GSS you'd have to ask the GSS management but I can't for one moment believe that they made the argument that there were enough BA retirees on six figure pensions out there that would accept the pay scales on offer so that they didn't need to improve them.
One comes across people like 4466 in all walks of live but never in GSS.
How lucky was that!
Good luck to you and all the GSS guys out there, both flyers and ground staff, who now face a very uncertain future.

[onehotflyer]

"rate of pay for flying a 744/8 was no better than for many UK turbo prop jobs"
4468, Im sure the turbo prob guy flies twice or 3 times the amount of hours that GSS pilots fly. I certainly am happy with my pay for the amount of work that I do.
For all your extensive flying experience you have a knack of showing how little you know.

[Noobyflewby]

I chanced upon this forum today after being given the link to the missing Malaysian 777 thread.


So it was serendipity that I then spotted this thread.


I think it was about 1998 that, as a freelance consultant to BAWC, I was asked to relocate the Atlas/BAWC 747 freighter operations from LGW to STN to free up slots for additional PAX operations into South America.


I seem to recall that there were one or two other aircraft operating out of Africa as well - Lion based in Belgium? - who also got moved to STN.


Whilst negotiating the move with Atlas I recall sitting next to an Atlas director one lunchtime and telling him I had just read about this extraordinary invention the British Navy would be using to power a new aircraft carrier to higher speeds.


It comprised two huge jet engines which, when an aircraft came in to land, would be redirected from propelling the carrier to blast an opposing force of air at the incoming jet to stall it onto the deck thus doing away with the need for the arresting wire.


Pretty cool, eh?


I still laugh at myself now when he explained that he, too, had seen the same article in The Daily Telegraph but had noted the date - April 1.


It was only later that I was told that this guy had once commanded the USS Nimitz - yup . . . only the world's largest aircraft carrier!


Boy, did I feel a dork!!


Anyway, back to BAWC. I thoroughly enjoyed that project [and working with Cargo as I did several projects for them] so I'm disappointed to read what's happened.

[Dan Winterland]

and the only reason there are any UK pilots flying that work at all is because BALPA kicked up a stink about Americans flying it

.

BALPA were quiet about the whole Atlas wet lease - no doubt under pressure of the BA management. It was the IPA which pushed the case and the real reason why GSS was started.

From that ignoble beginning came an almighty stink from BA pilots about the blatant scope-busting attempt from BA.

This isn't how ACMI wet leases work. The freight work was outsourced - as it had been for years. The only case BA pilots had was now that the freighters using Birdseed call-signs now had G registrations.

The outcome of that was that the only way in which BA were going to be able to outsource the flying was to give some of the P1 positions to BA secondees.

I don't see why. GSS had been running for a few years before the secondee situation emerged. They didn't need them, and many in GSS didn't want them. Interestingly, BALPA supported the secondee proposal - perhaps as a bit of a F you to the IPA having had their nose put out of joint in 2002. Knowing ES, I suspect he really didn't care where his captains came from, but was quite happy to go along with a plan from his mates at BA.

[Charlie Pop]

BALPA were quiet about the whole Atlas wet lease - no doubt under pressure of the BA management. It was the IPA which pushed the case and the real reason why GSS was started.

I don't know the extent of the IPAs involvement but BALPA were hardly quiet about it. They were certainly protesting to BA about it, which hardly fits with the 'BALPA in BAs pocket' theories.

This isn't how ACMI wet leases work. The freight work was outsourced - as it had been for years. The only case BA pilots had was now that the freighters using Birdseed call-signs now had G registrations.

The issue was not how ACMI wet leases work, it was about how BA pilots' scope clause worked. The BA pilots view was that ACMI leases of dedicated aircraft for exclusively BA work, be it pax or freight, was in breach of Scope.

don't see why. GSS had been running for a few years before the secondee situation emerged. They didn't need them, and many in GSS didn't want them. Interestingly, BALPA supported the secondee proposal - perhaps as a bit of a F you to the IPA having had their nose put out of joint in 2002. Knowing ES, I suspect he really didn't care where his captains came from, but was quite happy to go along with a plan from his mates at BA.

GSS running without the secondees was akin to a tax loophole. They got away with it for a while but the loophole was eventually closed. GSS didn't need secondees and ES fought tooth and nail to keep them out. It was BA who needed the secondees to keep the wheels on the wagon. No secondees would mean no deal with their own pilots and that was a more pressing concern for them than shipping a bit more freight, especially as the cost to BA was negligible. With only one customer GSS just had to lump it.

[Flightmech]

Yours aye!

[4468]

It could have been implimented more fairly, but the way it was done was immoral in the extreme. And possibly illegal.

if I were you, I'd be praying karma don't come a knockin'......

It amuses me how Nigels talk about scope like it's some kind of national law - it's not, it's an internal agreement.

BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!

This thread is entitled "GSS contract with BA(sic!) terminated."

Yet all people want to do is rehash old, and utterly pointless grievances against BA pilots! How pathetic.

British Airways, (never mind BA pilots!) have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with GSS being flushed down the pan. For the answers to that particular question look no further than the GSS management, and faceless International Airlines Group accountants in Madrid!

All this talk of BA secondees is history. It's nothing more than pathetic, pointless, juvenile mud-slinging! Time to get over it and we'll all just carry on with our lives the best we can eh?

Stick to the title of the thread.

[Charlie Pop]

It amuses me how Nigels talk about scope like it's some kind of national law - it's not, it's an internal agreement.

I doubt any Nigels think it's a national law, they're well aware it's an internal agreement with BA. That doesn't make it less valid an agreement in the intra-BA world of negotiation.

I don't think anything about secondments had been written into the first ACMI contract, so GSS had BA and BACC in a weak position..

I refer to my earlier comment about GSS being akin to a tax loophole. If BA and the BACC had been in a weak position there'd have been no secondees. The reality was that with a single customer GSS was in no position to haggle.

"Scope - yeah, so what? We have a contract with BA. Go on strike, see if we care .. But you won't cos you've got bigger fish to fry" (I forget which BALPA bust up it was, but it was much bigger than freight acmi. Even if it had been written in, it would have been perfectly within the clause to say - "Sure - we have two commands reserved for you, you are welcome to bid aspirationally for them" You reckon BA would say, OK we'll find another 744 operator who will accept secondees - Cargolux, Atlas, Martinair? ... Ha, ha , good luck with that one! Or in house at mainline - Yeah right).

You're right, the bust up was much bigger than freight ACMI, but freight ACMI was within the scope of the deal. I doubt Cargolux, Atlas or Martinair would have accepted secondees, but then they were well established freight haulers with their own client base and could continue operations without BA contracts. They weren't an independent company set up to exclusively fly BA freight.

That's what they should have said, and indeed, what DHL said

Nobody ever suggested to DHL they should have BA secondees. DHL are a successful freight forwarder with multiple customers shipping freight on DHL flights. Compare with GSS with a single customer.

and it was particularly iniquitous to apply it after the start of GSS, because it only impacted on FOs who had joined in good faith, most of whom were forced to leave, out of principal if nothing else, and just as much for financial reasons (as I think I was on £27k at the time, which was not sustainable with a tripling of the time to command through no fault of our own.)

Again, I refer to my tax loophole statement. Caveat Emptor. If you join a scope-busting airline in the full knowledge it exists to scope bust then don't be surprised if the circumstances change. And if you fly B744F for £27K then it's worth asking what the catch is.

It could have been implimented more fairly, but the way it was done was immoral in the extreme. And possibly illegal. It should have been the cue to GSS to search out more normal ACMI contracts, but management attempts to stem the exodus with tales impending new customers were pretty unconvincing, particularly after 12 years of Nada.

There was nothing illegal about it. The morality of undermining another airlines scope clause is another matter. If GSS had been serious about operating other ACMI contracts they've had around 7 years to get their act together.

[4468]

de fumo. You started off really well:

Let's not dwell on the secondments and move on;

A comment we could absolutely agree on. But then you couldn't help yourself lurching back into your petty prejudice:

It made the kick in the balls from cosseted ba pilots seem especially unkind.

What the bl00dy hell are you talking about?

Look back to postings #16 and 17 to see where the rot set in starting with garbage from tickler and zeddb.

You idiots think you can come on here spouting utter b011ocks, and those you are abusing will just sit back and take your bitter whining. I absolutely accept you are hurting, but don't be surprised if those you are slagging off choose to offer an alternative view. If you can't accept that then don't spout garbage in the first place.

Good luck to everyone happy to leave the bitterness behind. Everyone at BA wishes you well.