BA pilot voluntary redundancy
 

The Mail online has the story. The top 500 have been offered a package to go, we are all now waiting to see how many take it up.

Mail link here

Overstress

Not strictly true. The company will be/are contacting the top 500 initially with an illustration of the offer and inviting applications. At the same time anyone else is welcome to apply.:ok:

So the 100 pilots are being offered a years salary, correct?

No. What Top Bunk said.

TopBunk: yes your details are right, thanks for that.

Top 500 ( or any pilot in BA who requested a 'severance' quote by 5th May) should receive their letter between 15th and 20th May, and anyone wanting to accept the offer, has until May 31st to accept. I'm waiting for mine with interest. It is then up to BA how many of those are given it!

Don't believe everything that's written in the Media; but this doesn't seem too far off the truth, I hope !

can I apply to resign, even if I am not working for BA?

MMMaday38
 

You actually want to leave the best airline in the world at age 44 unbelieveable. This old timer would return now if it were possible

I think if you decode his screename you might understand why...

Mmmayday38,

Well, we will still be sorry to see you go. :sad:

Travesty!

W2P

MMMday38
 

Now realise who you are, don't let the B******Ds drive you out,spent most of my flying life as a CLING ON [ex Cambrian] and later as one of the FEW[Flat Earth W:mad:] the title given to the first of us who crossed over from shorthaul to long haul, for all the crap loved every minute in BA

Is this a touch narrow sighted?

A saving of £20M/yr has been quoted here, but we are sitting at the start of the recovery of this current economic recession - if BA were to dump these pilots, at a significant cost in the short term, to attempt a saving in the long term - would they not need to recruit again, at cost, when the good times come back?

A lot of if's and but's here... discuss.

assuming -and this is a massive assumption- we are at the start of a recovery, then even if we ignore that it's likely to be a long and protracted recovery, 100 senior pilots gone - on [say] an average of £100k p.a. = £10m p.a. saved.

If you replace 1 for 1, given everyone starts at the bottom, on £48k (assuming no SSP cadet entries, who you can pay even less to...) =£5m.

QED cost reduction of AT LEAST £5m a year. Alright, hardly a make or break amount for an airline such as BA, but still a decent sum....

The only 'but' is that an organisation like BA can get the best financial minds in the country to work out whether it is worth it! It's up to them, isn't it? If they say it's worth it, who's to argue?

we may be at the start of a recovery in the wider economy - however that doesn't mean that we are going to return to the bloated, out of control orgy of the last 3 or 4 years. BA, like everyone else, has over-expanded for a 'normal' market. Even if long term, sustainable growth occurs, its starting from a much smaller market than at the height of the bubble, and remember that a significant proportion of BA's bottom line came from transatlantic premium pax - and who did they work for?

Don't wish to p1ss on anyone's parade, but surely BA could make more cost savings than £20M by involving the employees?

Ah, but that's not The BA Way.....

Do explain....

Ahh........... welcome to a world that lets you disconect the autothrottle.

What I mean is that BA and every other company on the planet has recruited, expanded and written their business models to compete in a market that was a bubble, and as such was entirely false. All the economy is doing now, after the initial shock is merely correcting back to a path of sustainable growth, and that correction has meant that many companies in many industries find themselves horribly over capacitized.
The economy probably will recover(not definately as the question of the 80% of GDP national debt still remains unanswered), and probably will grow again leading us back to reasonably good times, but it will take a few years, maybe more than few, before the market even gets back to where it was at the end of 2007.
Thats what I mean by BA having over-expanded - they merely expanded to match the bubble then found themselves standing on air when the bubble burst.

Well there will be a few less in APS/NAPS and more in the DC scheme which will be a bonus...:ok:

A lot of dodgy thinking there!Have you seen other recessions? They all recover- from 6 moths to 10 years, but they all recover.

You know little about commercial life! Do you believe companies can artificially restrict growth just in caase a recession should start? You thin BA is in trouble? Look at the 90% of airlines and businesses in a worse position! Recessions are a natural part of a business cycle. They are the times when companies trim themselves and aim for better productivity and efficiency. Dare one say over a lifetime, at least one major recession is necessary- it's actually a healthy thing. Fat, inefficient and complacent companies and whole industries are taken out allowing better companies more room for expansion and development. Look at British and US car industries, British coal and shipbuilding.

From 6 moths :=
You thin BA :=

I suspect he had just got back from the pub when he wrote that. It is always a good idea to burst into print when you are thinking straight.

actually i hadn't just got back from the pub, and i know alot about commercial life - i haven't spent my whole life at the front of an aircraft, so why don't you think before you throw insults and actually read what I wrote.
I did not suggest the BA, nor anyone else should have restricted their expansion 'just in case'. Of course they had to react to the market, but the plain fact of the matter is that the market was a bubble, not part of the normal economic cycle and they are now too 'fat' for the current and ongoing market, hence the need to react to the current market in a different way. Of course the fact that BA are considerably more effiicient than many other companies and the airlines industry as a whole is also more efficient than alot of industries means that this is merely a bit of pain rather than fatal.

All recessions recover? hmmm, suggest you go and ask the Japanese what they think about that one? or any Germans born in the 20's and 30's just to cite 2 examples.
The Japanese stock market is still less than 30% of where it was 25 years ago - some recovery!
Of course the UK will probably recover - but a recovery that takes 30 years, whilst technically a recovery is no use to me! There is still considerable debate amongst those that know what they are talking about (IMF, world banks etc) about wether the UK will really recover from this recession or wether the economy will stabalise at a different (lower) level of equilibrium further down the global league table, so I wouldn't go around waving the flags just yet

The flaw in your analysis is your assumption that BA could expand in an almost unrestricted fashion like other airlines. BA, unlike those airlines, is slot constrained at LHR and it's year on year growth was forecast at something like 2% prior to this recession. Thats hardly bubble expansion by any measure. Equally, BA are barely running any surplus in pilot numbers and the only reason they are likely to see one soon is because the EU are shifting the rules and allowing them to keep the slots without flying them.

BA have in fact expanded very little over the past ten years. Until the recent delivery of a new 777-200ER there had been no new longhaul aircraft for ten years,- just a very few conversions of 767s from short haul to long haul. For most of the good years they were undersupplying their potential market,- a quite extraordinary situation which has allowed others to grow on business they chose not to provide for.
Amongst their current problems, two in particular relate to capacity and both have their roots in the Ayling era.
Firstly an overwhelmingly high percentage of their long haul production is on trans-Atlantic routes so they are heavily exposed to downturns on those. With the weakened pound on this side of the pond and the downturn in business ex the USA they therefore have a problem. Over the last decade or so they have sharply reduced their range of Asian and Australian destinations, deleting Osaka, Nagoya, Seoul, Taipei, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and have pulled out of all of Australia except Sydney and reduced their capacity to Bangkok. This is despite much of Asia having been the fastest growing market.
Secondly, again about 10 years ago it was decided to dump as much as possible of the Economy Class low yield market in favour of much expanded business class cabins. The current market is trading down from the front of the aircraft to the back so they can't fill their premium seats and haven't got the capacity "down the back" to make up for it. Short term reconfiguration just isnt possible in these days of high tech premium seating which is virtually built into the aircraft and the lead time on large numbers of new Economy seats is also lengthy.
Both things stem from them having decided not to spread their long haul risk over both geography and classes of business and too many eggs have gone into single baskets . They took an enormous gamble by concentrating on the Atlantic and premium business, both of which are currently taking the biggest hits. Low yield business they have dumped has also fuelled the growth of their competitors who have used it to build both points served and frequencies which have in turn made these competitors more appealing to the high yield business traffic and some of this will have come from BA .For a long time there has been a serious weakness in their global strategic understanding and planning.

Just look at recent BA offers
 

It's enought to look at the recent BA offers to see what financial dire straits they found themselves in - for example 2-for-1 in club world on any long-haul originating in the UK. As they advertised themselvels - this is for the first time ever.
This would also confirm what Skylion is talking about re: business class concentrated a/c configuration - which is no longer selling.

Skylion


Nearly correct - SIN still on the network, just operated there with a full load.

Just a quickie for you 757_Driver:

If your assertion is correct, how do you explain that BA employ almost exactly the same number of pilots as they did 10 years ago? I suggest you do a little more research before pontificating.

bs13:

Don't you remember 'The World's Greatest Giveaway'?

By working twice as hard?

And perchance getting twice bigger pay for twice more work?:hmm:




I tought so.:(

Try doing just a little more research, before making yourselves look stupid!

Don't you remember 'The World's Greatest Giveaway'?
 

no I don't - please remind me :confused:.
BA must have forgotten too as they promote it as "first ever": BA launches two-for-one biz flight offer-01 May, 2009

ETOPS -Apologies. I meant of course Jakarta. Singapore is very much still on the network