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EK to Decommission 50%+ of Airbus A380, Axe 1/2 of Pilots & Cabin Crew

Middle East Many expats still flying in Knoteetingham. Regional issues can be discussed here.

EK to Decommission 50%+ of Airbus A380, Axe 1/2 of Pilots & Cabin Crew

Old 11th Jul 2020, 21:19
  #581 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by White Knight
Please. Enough nonsense! Back to the THREAD TOPIC... I'm sure it's not just sickness that leads to being chosen for redundancy; Performance, Fuel uplift, Attendance, Use of 2 etc and thrown together into some sort of computer algorithm. WE on the coalface will never know...
let me add what I know...
1. Locals are on full pay as we speak. Good for them.. This from a kocal friend of mine who confirmed me this.(same as in Qatar. At least there they are open about it!)
2. From what I’ve gathered sofar, most of the guys I know didn’t have any warnings or cautions. Some did have a sickness event in their carreer (cancer, operation, heart, sleep)....
3. I also think there is a correllation with raising fatigue reports in the past. Nearly all of them I asked did raise reports this in the past.
And for those familiar, we are not doing legacy carrier rosters here in EK. The Triple had the most brutal rosters in the world awhile back (2-3-4 years back with max 8 to 9 days off a month including indian night turns and ULRs back to back). So many skippers raised safety flags (reports) at that time for which they now might pay the price.? That might also explain why the junior guys all seem to be safe (as rosters are less brutal now.)

Can someone also repost the interview with STC was quoted saying ‘fire now and hire back later’. Criminal if you know how many guys in late 40s and 50s have to pull out the whole family, sell houses at a big loss etc....
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Old 11th Jul 2020, 21:55
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Originally Posted by Xulu
It’s certainly not on performance. The only people left from my batch are those who got held back from Command due... performance.

The totally disinterested kids playing on WiFi from pushback to touchdown - they’re still here too.

Yet, we see some of our absolute best and brightest - highly respected bods shown the door.

How does that affect the long-term? Who’s going to train these WiFi wonders staring at their phone for 8 hours?

With 75% of the a380 expats gone - They’re the new best and brightest...sitting next to....those who shall not be named. It’s a 50/50 split now.

You'll have one guy watching Netflix on his iPad, and the other smoking shisha. That’s literally the future.

And - Ironically it’s pilots going to work sick, who made us sick that keep their jobs.

People with 30 sick days in 15+ years terminated over those with *only* 20 sick days in 2.

This could not have been done worse. If they were worried about rising incidents on the a380 before - god help them now.
A really goof post Xulu.

There is a lot a fear and discussion both on this forum and amongst EK pilots re sickness and loss of employment. I am sure we all someone who has been touched by this. It would also seem that most don't know the process that is used by HR WRT to sickness. In a previous post I did an awful job of describing what I meant about this, so please let me try again.
The two issues, that being pressing 2, and receiving a caution or warning are totally independent.

First the pressing of 2. This is managed by having you have to speak to a non medical qualified person to describe the condition that is requiring you to call sick. This is to stop the feeble from taking a sickie. The next level for this is to prevent you from be able to self certify yourself, and require a doctor's visit prior to sick days being allowed. The next level is termination of employment. The last level is kind of related to genuine long term sickness, but by process only.

Long term sickness is handled in a different way, and is the same for every employee throughout the company. And this is the problem. It does not take into account that some conditions render your medical invalid. Dropp gave a great example of a trainer that was long term sick, but during this period redesigned the command course, received an award for this work. But also a caution for sickness. This pilot was doing gainful and worthwhile work throughout his sick period, but non of this is considered.

This is all because of the HR process. That process looks at your sick days and your productivity in comparison to your peers. In this case, the trainer was employed as a pilot, not a SFE, so his sickness, and productivity is compared to the pilot group. By productivity they mean paid flying hours. I am not sure what the average pilot sick days are now, but for the past few years it has averaged around 4. So because this pilot had far more than 4 sick days, and flew less hours he will be requested to come into the office to discuss his sickness. When they say discuss, they mean the computer has already run his data and given him a score. This score will determine what level of caution he will receive. This will have already been printed before the meeting, so regardless of what he says or what awards he produces he gets that caution. There is no human intervention in this process. Now if this pilot had been a SFE when employed, he would be compared with other SFEs, and as he had been very productive, he would not have received the meeting nor caution letter.

Another example is a 777 pilot who broke his leg and was off the roster for 5 weeks. He received a level 1 caution. At the time of braking his leg, due to augmenting flights, he had flown 997hrs. He argued that he had flown the max hours legally allowed, and that his time off roster had therefore not reduced his productivity. He was told that his peers were only having 4 days sick per year and he was above average, and they offered to support him in managing his sickness. Once again no human intervention allowed to fix this silly situation.

So the argument that dialing 2 is causing genuine sick people to be sacked is not correct. In fact, if every pilot went sick more, the peer average would increase, and could, in theory only, save jobs. We all know that would not really be the case, but I hope you see my point.

The reason I ask that talk like the dial 2 causing people to be sacked etc not be spread, is because this has touched lots of families. Many spouses are now going through the anger part of what has happened to them, and friction between friends etc is happening. Now is the time when these families need support, not more rumours that makes their situation worse.

HR have set limits to how many sick days and how much productivity will raise the flag. These numbers are not allowed to be shared with the pilot group. Also, the employee manual states that after 365 sick days in any calander year, the employee will be terminated. HR have interrupted this as 365 days throughout your career. They will make exceptions to this one sometimes. We have many co-workers dealing with this one. Well we did prior to Jun.

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Old 11th Jul 2020, 22:05
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Originally Posted by 5star
let me add what I know...
1. Locals are on full pay as we speak. Good for them.. This from a kocal friend of mine who confirmed me this.(same as in Qatar. At least there they are open about it!)
2. From what I’ve gathered sofar, most of the guys I know didn’t have any warnings or cautions. Some did have a sickness event in their carreer (cancer, operation, heart, sleep)....
3. I also think there is a correllation with raising fatigue reports in the past. Nearly all of them I asked did raise reports this in the past.
And for those familiar, we are not doing legacy carrier rosters here in EK. The Triple had the most brutal rosters in the world awhile back (2-3-4 years back with max 8 to 9 days off a month including indian night turns and ULRs back to back). So many skippers raised safety flags (reports) at that time for which they now might pay the price.? That might also explain why the junior guys all seem to be safe (as rosters are less brutal now.)

Can someone also repost the interview with STC was quoted saying ‘fire now and hire back later’. Criminal if you know how many guys in late 40s and 50s have to pull out the whole family, sell houses at a big loss etc....
Local pilots are not on 100% pay. This I can confirm. They are on the same 50% deal everyone else is on. Most have housing allowance, so when they say how much per month they receive this amount will be included. I know this because I recently had a conversation with a dude and did the double take when he mentioned his take home pay. When queried I discovered he had included the allowance.
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Old 11th Jul 2020, 23:12
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Originally Posted by Flying Clog
Good grief, I thought us in the Fragrant Harbour were a bunch of muppets. But you lot ... good grief!

Going on about he said, she said.. Seems a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

The last 20 or so posts should be cleared off by the mods.

Let's get back to spreading awareness of how badly EK has treated it's pilots. That's why we're reading this. Not schadenfreude, but more making notes so we can be prepared/avoid the same outcome.
Hit the nail on the head!!!!
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Old 11th Jul 2020, 23:39
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Greetings gents.

I am one of the remaining, and I can't agree more with Xulu.

I am myself an average Joe. Not a perfect file. Not helped with a project, a training development, or recruitment, or didn't get a bunch of Najms.
I just happened to be cheaper than an involved, keen, helping TRE.

I can't but feel relieved.
But deep inside I still know it is not fair.
It is as stupid business decision as it gets.
​​
My guess? In this last round, an excel sheet with price tags for the last year or two. Done. 20 min job. Not bad for a billions of dollars worth corporation.

My hats off to those deserving better luck that are sent away.
​​​​​​
I will keep being a responsible, diligent crew.
But I will probably never be able to fill the boots of many.

Good luck to those leaving.
Good luck to those staying.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 00:35
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​​​​​​

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses

I am probably old school... Just saying!
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 01:33
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donpizmeov

thanks for that post
my question is now - what are the EK doctors good for - we have no choice to go to another doctor for getting sick or good to fly certificates - I for my self experienced weak decision making in the required procedures and therefor the sick time became nearly twice as long as required because I could not the right treatment In the first place - and now it my fault because HR does just trust a computer - (keep this a placeholder for what I think)
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 03:20
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Unfortunately that is not an uncommon story.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 04:21
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Does anyone know the @ numbers of pilots that got shafted ? Are the dreaded emails over for the time being ? Can't imagine working under these conditions.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 06:27
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According to my calculations(not a thumb suck.....I reckon accurate to 1%) they axed a total of 517 Airbus captains. They have 448 left out of 965 before the carnage started. I didn't have the patience to analyse FO or Boeing numbers but over 50% of airbus pilots are gone.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 06:30
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would 780 remaining airbus pilots be about right? Started with around 1800 I think.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 06:33
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TBH I didn't look at the right seat but I would think that might leave us a bit light. If they left the numbers in the same proportion then we should have about 870 FO.....I believe the starting point was closer to 1890 but there were a lot of probies in that so may or may not be a factor.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 06:42
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Fair points. The fleet was decimated. Unbelievable most of the names on the list.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 06:51
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I feel humbled when I see many of the names on the list.

My personal opinion is that the pendulum is going to swing back and hard. When recovery takes place there will be lots of cheap planes and fuel with people desperate to travel. However, many pilots will have left the industry for good, with very few replacements. The planes that need to be populated are here today, on the premises(sure some will be retired). We are not talking theoretical future orders, but planes that are costing $$$ sitting doing nothing. Within 5 years I believe we will see a pilot shortage second to none.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 07:47
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Don.
strange. The guy I know was formal. We talked about the principle of 50pct cut, not numbers. As you know they are on a different contract and a lot of wasta is used to keep them in line. I don't have a problem as such with this, it just shows one more time how these muppets in dxb are out of touch with reality...Try this in the western world....
At times when innocent line guys are dumped on the street it is very bitter. This exercise could have been handled differently....HaH AAR and TC have all blood on their hands....
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 07:58
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HAH hahahah TC AAR and the cronies don’t care TBH. Now they are making it seem like a norm. Has anyone seen the BBC interview in its full yet? “We were OTW of the most amazing year and this came along” blah blah blah.... and as usual no apology and this time it’s not the currency conversion, geolpolitical stuff but covid. By culling so much it makes way to introduce new T&C once the recovery comes in full swing with lesser offerings. The way it’s happening with Wizzy air down the road, it’s just a pre curser of the new ME “packages” of the future.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 08:59
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Kenny wrote:

"Within 5 years I believe we will see a pilot shortage second to none."

Keep on wishing. We heard that for the last 20 years even as the T & Cs eroded continuously. There is still an infinite number of ball pens further east. The industry has long left any reasonable sense of cost vs. safety, just look at the Max problem, and anything that walks away on two legs after you shake a palm tree will do for the likes of TC et al.
It will be a matter of how many jobs at what levels are available and how low the average pilot is willing to go, before the below par mass is considered. But there will not be a shortage of the latter, believe me.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 09:00
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TC saying that the schedule will be back at 2019 pre COVID levels by summer 2020......OK how? You dont have anywhere near enough pilots now to do that.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 09:02
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Originally Posted by 5star
Don.
strange. The guy I know was formal. We talked about the principle of 50pct cut, not numbers. As you know they are on a different contract and a lot of wasta is used to keep them in line. I don't have a problem as such with this, it just shows one more time how these muppets in dxb are out of touch with reality...Try this in the western world....
At times when innocent line guys are dumped on the street it is very bitter. This exercise could have been handled differently....HaH AAR and TC have all blood on their hands....

Agreed. And we still have those on leave without pay from other airlines employed. It's insane.
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Old 12th Jul 2020, 12:41
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Originally Posted by glofish
Kenny wrote:

"Within 5 years I believe we will see a pilot shortage second to none."

Keep on wishing. We heard that for the last 20 years even as the T & Cs eroded continuously. There is still an infinite number of ball pens further east. The industry has long left any reasonable sense of cost vs. safety, just look at the Max problem, and anything that walks away on two legs after you shake a palm tree will do for the likes of TC et al.
It will be a matter of how many jobs at what levels are available and how low the average pilot is willing to go, before the below par mass is considered. But there will not be a shortage of the latter, believe me.
Sad but true gloie.
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