BA Pilots Lose Out on Commands
 

As well as helping BA finance the BMI takeover by giving up two days leave, average holiday pay entitlement and other cost savings, it looks like BA pilots have been stitched up.

Surely IBERIA flight crew should also be forced to give some productivity in order to finance the BMI takeover, now that it is IAG who are the overall parent company? Why has all the burden been heaped on BA's flight crew? Seems rather unfair.

Now to add insult to injury, BA has given 15 commands to BMI First Officers! This will delay promotion for BA's own F/O's.

What a way to treat such loyal employees!!

Count

Nice try at getting the outrage bus rolling by a lifting a number out of the proposals, shame you haven't given correct context in which that number sits and the various caveats attached to it.

BTW how's life in academia suiting you?

Why would they get rid of ops staff in Madrid because they're absorbing a smaller airline up in London?

count,
a typically simplistic attitude to a complex issue that requires a complex solution-one which I think may have been found.
perhaps just too altruistic for you...

Life can be tough some times!!!

Tell me , what have short haul cabin crew given up to allow the integration? Cheers balpa!

Count,

Have a chat with the BA engineers that due to the BMI merger are facing redundancy or relocation to Heathrow from their Manchester or Edinburgh homes to make way for the new recruits.

Now that's a company kicking you where it hurts.

I'm welling up with your situation.

Crime
 

Don't forget the biggest crime of all here here (and I do mean crime) is that the BMI baby pilots will all be made redundant in about 8 weeks time.
This is set against a backdrop of:

• the BMI baby pilots ARE employees of IAG
• BA flies the same aircraft type
• BA taking on 800 pilots over the next few years (inc the 737 CL)
• BA will take many of baby's aircraft and absorb them into the LGW fleet
• Lufthansa gave a huge discount to IAG to deal with the baby 'issue'. This figure may soon come to light and is thought to be shocking

BMI baby pilots (who are all employed by British Midland Airways Ltd) will not even get a look into the BA holding pool.

I hope to God someone with balls (obviously not BAlpa) sues their a$$es off.

PS - have you even seen Willie Walsh and Michael O'Leary in the same room at the same time? Top of the morning to you all.

Unfortunately, including for an old friend of mine at BMIBaby, the business model of Baby does not fit with IAG, hence IAG did not, nor ever, bid to include either Regional or Baby in their bid for BMI Mainline. IAG, through BA, have no need of regional operators or bases, the only positive asset that Mainline brought with them were the slots. Even the benefit of those will take time to work through. Hence the acceptance of the pilot community to work to a long term plan (XWB350/777X). But, hey, why not spout the Daily Mail headline for the day without considering the future?

Can you back this up with proof? Nope, thought not. The Baby aircraft are a completely different mod state to the heaps that BA flies out of LGW, add to that that Airbus have been backfilling already at LGW and the decision for fleet replacement is currently being made that last thing IAG need is a bunch of clapped out old 73's.

Sad but true, see my original point above.

Yep, someone sue LH for not managing to sell off the two parts of the company that LH originally agreed to sell off but couldn't. Thus dumping them onto IAG (BA NEVER bought BMI) as a cost reduction negative liability. The reduced purchase cost of Mainline with Regional and Baby was there to cover winding up costs. LH dumped BMI unceremoniously. The pensions minister and the pensions regulator need a rocket fired at them for abandoning BMI by allowing LH to dump the pension into the hands of the UK regulator. LH screwed BMI right royally. Without a buyout the slots would have reverted to BAA Heathrow and the bidding would have begun. There would, however, have been far, far more redundancies.

Out of interest under what legal ruling would you 'sue' anybody anyway? If a small independant company had bought up the BMI group and then announced they couldn't support Regional and Baby the headline would have been different. 'New startup saves 350 jobs, unfortunately redundancies due but many jobs saved' etc... IAG through BA are not a charity and not there to absorb all pilot jobs from companies that were foisted on to them.

So, Penguin, just like the 'Count' pick your cherries and complain without knowing the business reasons behind the action or the true nature of the major participants.

I understand all the business arguements.
The point is that IAG have done NOTHING to even attempt to mitigate redundancies at BMI baby.

With regards to the aircraft - standby

As city flyer states BA is currently 'overborne' with pilots.

IAG never wanted BMI regional or Baby. Thus they came as a cost reduction to cover the cost of redundancies. What mitigation should they apply to a business they never wanted and came as an administrative headache?

If you buy a repossesion house from the bank do you have to give accomodation to the previous owners???

Companies ave been wound up all over the country throughout this recession why should the airline industry be any different? Or perhaps BA should have integrated all on a zippered seniority and then applied last in first out on the MSL? Would that calm your sense of outrage?

All BMI companies had 6-8 weeks of trading left at the time of takeover. For Baby the resulting redundancies were, sadly, inevitable.

Im sure if BMIbaby had been LGW based you would all now be employees of BA along with your former mainline colleagues...

But your operation never presented a threat to the MSL or the risk of a "BA Express" out of London and is therefore of no concern to Balpa and the mainline folk.

To be honest, given that fact, then Baby probably would have been integrated. They would have bought their own capacity to one of the two airports that BA operates from thus making integration into the core business easy.

They don't.

IAG wanted the slots so they can slowly be converted to profitablt LH slots. Filling up those slots with creaky 73's to destinations that don't feed the LH route structure would be a business disaster.

Nothing to do with MSL 'threats' or 'BA Express' threats, IAG can set up any airline under any AOC they wish, BA pilots or BALPA would have absoloutly no power to stop them, that lesson was learnt under the Openskies dispute.

Purely business. Return profit to the shareholders.

As to the commands, BMI crews have been given 1 command in 100 to satisfy Tupe under future aspirations. As the conversion of SH slots to LH slots will, on average, increase crewing thus commands by 4-5 crews per slot the overall benefit to BA crews will be a net increase in available commands. Something that was looking increasingly difficult in a slot constrained LHR.

Better to plan for the future than end up withering on the vine like a certain dispute ended in recently eh Count?

You are barking up the wrong tree... Why would IAG have to clear up LH's problems? They did not want BMI Baby and they definatly did not want not their problems.... :ugh:

Untrue.

Also untrue.

Neither were they ever going to.

The responsibility of selling/disposing of Baby was down to Lufthansa. IAG agreed to buy ONLY BMI Mainline. That was all IAG wanted. As Lufthansa couldn't sell Baby or Regional by the time the Mainline purchase deal HAD to be concluded the costs of disposal were deducted from the Mainline purchase price.

This cost reduction means that the costs incurred by IAG in providing redundancy packages will, effectively, be borne by LH.

Without a buyer Baby and Regional were already being made redundant at the time of purchase ........ by Lufthansa.

Do you still believe yourself to be a pilot Count?

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/4...ml#post6470797

You make it sound like IAG have been hoodwinked! AFAIK they agreed to buy the BMI group, encompassing Mainline, Baby and Regional, less whatever Lufty could dispose of seperately.

No point being naive about the sharp practice in big business, but let's be accurate here; IAG agreed to buy Baby!

for all bmi baby pilots, welcome to BA. They don t care really about you (regional pilots) a bit like they didnt care for us under BA CitiExpress. BA were recruiting but we still had to go through all the loops. We did have a guarantee of attendance selection day. All under the fact that CitiExpress took BA cadets after 9/11.

Thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Not really. The preliminary negotiation was ONLY for BMI mainline as neither BMI Baby nor Regional were compatible with the BA route structure. Also the only 'tradeable' assets that the BMI group contained were the slots.

The original agreement for £178 million was ONLY for BMI Mainline. The agreement between LH and IAG was that LH would dispose of/sell both Regional AND Baby. This they failed to do thus the cost of the acquisition was reduced as a penalty for leaving IAG the responsibility of disposing of Baby and Regional.

There was no 'hoodwinking' going on but people seem to think that IAG have some innate responsibility to protect jobs in two companies that LH threw to the wolves.