No Staff Travel for GF
 

Whats going on?

:*

What are you talking about???

I just received my ID50J tickets from GF Staff Travel..... :confused:

HR VP is killing the moral of the troops. First he cancelled first class upgrades. Now it is a ban on subload travel and ID50 for employees on the 2 busiest seasons. The reason is to leave as much seat available for revenue passengers????????????????????????????????????

Hey, wake up, Water!!!!! Sulbload means when seats are empty!

And what about when the other airlines find we are refusing their employees on ID90 and ID50? They will cancell their agreement with us. We don't all come from London or Paris. We have to rely on other airlines to get home. Have you thought for 2 minutes how expensive it is gonna be for Gulfair to buy full fare tickets for annual leave for employees who doesnt come from Paris or London??? Other airlines will quickly terminate the ID50 agreement with us when they hear about what you did. Do you have a calculator in your office?

Why are we working in this industry?

1- Money
2- Days OFF to enjoy ourselves
3- Cheap travel

Listen to me HR guy, you just removed from Gulfair the last reason why I still work here. Now ask yourself why you are so short of pilots and have your training department congested and costly.

Give me back my only way out BAH please. I feel clostrophobic now.

What next?
 

This is outrageous. I think the management have lost the plot. This is an insult to an already injured and demorolized workforce!
I have to get out of here every few weeks just to keep my sanity. In fact, I will probably be medically unfit to continue working much after this embargo. I will go and convalesce somewhere suitable to my recovery. I suggest the same remedy to others.

Consequences of that decision
 

Hi guys,
I really dont know if Mr W......... had the time to evaluate the consequences of that kind of decision among GFemployees.
I know people just employed by the company , less than 6 months at least, who get their family ready to go back to europe in summer and avoid the heat: their unique possibility was to get an ID50...

Another thing I want to enhance is that the management gives us here the proof they can change our contract at any time since it is stipulated in those contracts that we are entitled with getting ID90 and a certain numbers of ID50 per years.

How can we keep on like that if our contracts dont have any real value?

Memo I recieved from HR stated 'Friends and Family tickets', these are the 6 additional Q class tickets Per Annum. Not Staff and direct family members tickets.

Gosh, I wonder why they're cracking down on those......

;)

Lets start an "union", and all call sick for 2 weeks in the middle of the summer...

GF HR: you should be very carefull, there are plenty of jobs now available in europe (at least in UK)...

Next time I get a call, I will think twice.

Seems a bit strange to limit ID90's not too sure I fully understand the gist of the publication...so the seat goes empty?....ID 50's understandeable, because they are technically "firm", but ID90?

Ironbutts

There is no logic in restricting ID 90 and 75's as they are all subload.

In SQ we are limited to 4 ID90 pa until 10 years service and SQ Cargo only get ID75 .Certain people in Management just hate to think you are getting something for nothing despite the ID's costing quite a lot and contributing greatly to the Airlines bottom line.

millerscourt I am aware '75s and 90s are spave available...ID 50's are "firm" provided they are booked in advance..but you are still subject to offload, if no other pax are travelling subload, and the seats are all full fare pax....

I would agree with Millerscourt.....In 1985 I was told by a GF accountant a Brit. that the staff travel department had made a 3 million dinars profit for Gulf Air and he had received a bonus based on this.
He also said Gulf Air was saving a fortune by having terminated the expat pilots provident fund in 1976 and not having now to attempt to administer this pension fund or contribute to it as the company expanded.
He advised me to save like hell for myown retirement as the Arab pilots were being provided with a projected BD20,000.00 p.a. pension after 20years service and were covered and I certainly was not.
He feared for the future stability of the company as Arab pilots had to resign to trigger their pensions.
Then they would be free to fly for competitors and to also qualify for a second pension.
He said it was all a huge waste of training cost and said it had cost GF a million US$ per national cadet trained over 5 years to feed any competition airline a steady stream of experianced pilot staff in 15years time. He was not wrong!
Cheers scanscanscan

I don't know what's going on here, limiting the ID90 even for crew ! GF rather want to have their seat empty than having their own people travelling on it !
So now to go back to Europe we'll have to fly Qatar or Emirates on ID90! this is crazy.
Hope HR will change their mind.
Cheers.

Can someone copy-and-paste the memo so that we all can understand what is says.

I am at BA, on some routes at certain times of the year, there is a ban on ID90 travel. This is to stop staff (usually famlies) turning up when flights are expected to go full for a number of days.
Example is tryng to go to SYD at XMAS, returning to the UK during the last week of August from the Caribbean just before the schools start, or the first 2 weeks of Jan India-UK.

A targeted ban on ID90 helps our airport staff focus their efforts on the paying customer (we all know and heard of some staff and their demands) and gives staff a realistic view of whether they will get to where they want to go - I have witness families stuck for 3 - 4 days trying to get on and I can tell you its very stressful on them, esp. the kids.

As requested ......the 2 mails from VPHRS

-----------------------------------------------


Due to expected high customer demand in the busy months ahead it is
only proper that Gulf Air protect as many seats as possible for our
revenue paying passengers.

Therefore with immediate effect :

No further 'Friends and Family' tickets are permitted to be purchased
for travel on all routes across the Gulf Air network during the periods
15th June to 15th September 2005 and 11th December 2005 to
11th January 2006.

Any tickets already paid for and ticketed prior to this policy amendment
will be honoured.

Friends and Family tickets may continue to be purchased for travel
outside the embargo periods mentioned above.



------------------------------------------------

Due to expected high customer demand in the busy months ahead it is only

proper that Gulf Air protects as many seats as possible for our revenue

passengers.

Therefore with immediate effect :

* No Industry Discount (ID) or Agency Discount (AD) rebate travel of any

level will be permitted for travel between Gulf - London / Paris /

Beirut / Cairo - Gulf during the periods 15th June - 15th September 2005.

* No Industry Discount (ID) or Agency Discount (AD) rebate travel of any

level will be permitted for travel between Gulf - London / Paris /

Beirut / Cairo / Sydney - Gulf during the period 11th December 2005

to 11th January 2006.

* The above embargoes apply to confirmed and subload travel in all discount

category types e.g. ID50 / ID75 / ID90 tickets.

* In addition any requests for rebate travel in the First Class cabins from any

non Gulf Air employee must be submitted to the PCE office for approval

in future.

*FLASH* *FLASH* *FLASH*

Latest news... the embargo is ONLY ON FIRST CLASS ID90's. It's still a p.o. (ID90's ARE space available, after all....)

This time, it turns out the secretaries did their usual wonderful job of "he said this, therefor it meant this...". As usual it got stuffed up going from A > B > C and the memo ended up quite a hot potato (justifiably!) once the masses read it.

It's nowhere near as bad as once thought, thankfully!

[/ruffled feathers] <-- a haha for those of you that know HTML.
:p

(edited once the facts were known)

Just read the memo and can understand the inconvenence it will cause. Not good to have to cough up full fare for family at a time when you most want them to travel. However hardly a resigning matter since GF has one of the most generous ID policies of any airline. Unlimited ID90's is not the industry norm (ask Singapore) and if you go somewhere else because of this it's cutting off your nose to spite your face. Most big carriers do this kind of thing at busy periods. Try one of the LCC's and see what it's like to have NO interline agreements. Also important to remember that GF ticket prices are often cheaper if you pay full fare instead of ID50 since ID tickets are always based on the highest fare. So many cheap offers there are bound to be bargains. Not much consolation but the cup should always be half full.

I have been told by a GF friend that the ID90 email actually had a subject line that says "Embargo on First Class Rebated Tickets". So, the ID90 limitation applies only to those particular routes and only to ID90 First class. Still, it is weird to stop GF employees buying ID90's when the basic idea behind it is that you cannot get the seat until after the flight has closed and only if a seat is indeed available.

If you have a First Class ID 90 the ground staff will almost always check you in Y class and you upgrade at the gate,subload of course. The number of times you get bumped on a First class ID are few. In 5 years only happened to me once. This embargo is only for a limited period and only relates to a few routes,hardly a soap opera drama as infered by some here. Definitely a pain but nobody died.

Embargo's are a common issue at many airlines and personally, I have no problems understanding that principle. It has been going on for years. What I might have a headache over is the suddenness (?) of the edict from "Inhuman" Resources. Some warning should have been issued to help those who use the tickets to plan their escape. Once again it proves those who keep saying it: the wrong guy is in the job...