Wizz Air announces 1,000 redundancies as it cuts 19% of workforce
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Were they assigned to different bases than the ones who got terminated during line training? Maybe Wizz air decided to keep more people in the bases where greater demand is forecast. Especially if said people are local as the benefit of living at home can outweigh one's will to jump ships even in the long-term run, when the market does improve.
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They didn't start the line training. They just finished the Type Rating and were waiting for the OCC and line training... all of them still employed.
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We'll probably never know for sure, but it sounds like the criteria for letting people go definitely had nothing to do with LIFO. Perhaps more like a combination of individual performance and forecast demand in a given base. Plus Confair/floating.
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Base Captains had a lot of hand with this issue and did the dirty job for the company. After they revealed a list with all fired pilots, I could see a very diverse group of pilots, from LTC who were in the company for more than 10 years, CAPT, F/O and cadets. I personally know some guys that are on that list and I can say they weren't the favorites of the base. They included as well a lot of guys from Confair and floating. Lots of Italians have been fired...looks like the company has been waiting for them. From my point of view they knew to who to fire long time ago.
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Wizz have a blacklist, if you refuse to work on days off when they call you up etc., than you get put on their blacklist, and also for other things you end up on the blacklist.
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As an Italian who tried to join the company not so long ago, I am really curious to know why allegedly lots of Italians have been fired. Is anybody willing to expand on that?
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Base Captains had a lot of hand with this issue and did the dirty job for the company. After they revealed a list with all fired pilots, I could see a very diverse group of pilots, from LTC who were in the company for more than 10 years, CAPT, F/O and cadets. I personally know some guys that are on that list and I can say they weren't the favorites of the base. They included as well a lot of guys from Confair and floating. Lots of Italians have been fired...looks like the company has been waiting for them. From my point of view they knew to who to fire long time ago.
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This probably means that the doors are now permanently closed for these guys, even when demand picks up and the company starts hiring again. Why would you hire someone who has already been labelled as a troublemaker and blacklisted if you can instead choose someone else who is happy to play by the rules if that means a paycheck and hours in the logbook? And there will be no shortage of potential candidates for any flight deck role for the foreseeable future.
And remember that real troublemakers were let go on a regular basis even before coronavirus if company had half a decent reason: there is no union in Wizzair and company has no mercy.
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Not always true Dirk, there were massive CRM issues with two of the local Captains in Vilnius in my time there to the extent that virtually half of the FOs had complained and refused to fly with them. The base captain there at the time even emailed HQ in BUD to ask rostering for those people not to be paired together. One was even on a command blacklist from his previous airline due CRM and safety issues. The company couldn’t get rid (at the time - I don’t know what’s happened since) as they were struggling to recruit pilots.
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Good question, and some guys were asking the same thing, I heard int he past from different pilots that some Italians left the company in bad conditions without respecting the contract and so on... who knows if that's true or not...but the thing is in that list there were quite a lot of Italians.
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Wishful thinking. Not all those fired were troublemakers. Many good guys were let go as well, and there is no reason they won’t be hired back in favour of a newbie that nobody knows.
And remember that real troublemakers were let go on a regular basis even before coronavirus if company had half a decent reason: there is no union in Wizzair and company has no mercy.
And remember that real troublemakers were let go on a regular basis even before coronavirus if company had half a decent reason: there is no union in Wizzair and company has no mercy.
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Not always true Dirk, there were massive CRM issues with two of the local Captains in Vilnius in my time there to the extent that virtually half of the FOs had complained and refused to fly with them. The base captain there at the time even emailed HQ in BUD to ask rostering for those people not to be paired together. One was even on a command blacklist from his previous airline due CRM and safety issues. The company couldn’t get rid (at the time - I don’t know what’s happened since) as they were struggling to recruit pilots.
I asked her why, and she told me you know why, apparently he was exactly the same in their relationship as he was on the flight deck, a real miserable .........!
So it took them 6 years to get rid of the bald Mr CRM. To be fair, over all the years, none I have met have been anything close to how he was.
Curious you could PM who was the other.
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Good question, and some guys were asking the same thing, I heard int he past from different pilots that some Italians left the company in bad conditions without respecting the contract and so on... who knows if that's true or not...but the thing is in that list there were quite a lot of Italians.
There was guys paying back their TR 1000 Euro a month for 18 months, living on crumbles, and than they still bonded you for another 18 months, despite you had paid them back 18.000 Euros, the TR cost them nothing, as was provided by Airbus as part of the aircraft purchases, and even if they had paid for it, it would not cost 36.000 Euros, but that's what they bonded you for over 3 years that time.
It went so far that they threaten to not release security reference letters to new employees if you left, which is not legal, as people were escaping as soon as they got half decent offers from other companies.