interesting....

https://www.eurocockpit.be/news/good...thank-you-mess

The insolvency administrator has urged the pilots on strike to show up for work - if not, he will have to ground the airline at short notice and close the shop for good.

is Fly Niki trying to save itself ?

So the Pilots throw a sickkie and the Airline in even more stress than it is already. The Airline goes bust and without doubt the Pilots will be the ones who get jobs - might not be where they want to be - whilst the Ground Staff end up on the rock n roll. #great

Effectively, it already has. The pilots have nothing to lose. And let's be honest, would the ground personnel care about the pilots if the shoe was on the other foot?

Would be interesting to know why Aer-Cap pulled the plug.

All the bids have to be in by Friday. Maybe no one wants the long haul business so they have dumped it and its AB that have pulled the plug and not Aer-Cap

The irony is that from the limited funds airberlin has available, the pilots are the only ones who get money from those funds - while salaries at the moment are paid by an insolvency fund and not the employer, airberlin has to pay the balance for all salaries that exceed a statutory cap - and these are the salaries of the better earning pilots.

At least one airline I know of who is involved are going to be asking for records and opinions on crews before offering them joining interviews. They are not going to be automatically taking everyone and so calling a sickie might not be the wisest move right now...

I have not had to deal with an employer going bankrupt (yet...), but I can hardly imagine how much stress this puts on all of the staff. How will they pay their bills and mortgages, what will happen in a month, three months, six months, etc.

I would expect (and hope) that many pilots who do not have a significant other that makes a good living individually and/or a large stash of cash saved for such situations would be under huge amounts of stress and should be calling in sick in this type of situation where you know your employer is bankrupt and you have no idea where you will end up, yet you are still expected to go to work every day as if nothing were amiss.

Each and every employee of AB knew this was coming. I seriously doubt this is hurting the crew out of the blue wrt bills and mortgages.

Apparently some have also have been told the conditions of the LH "rescue". Pilots not going to have LH contracts but Eurowings ones = 40% less for an AB Captain + Uncertainty about the A330s .
I understand from the media here that it is almost only Captains calling in sick. Same today apparently.
VC Cockpit not behind it.

How killing off their present company will help that? Either they take the -40% or won't be employed and can go to China. They do not cause trouble for a functional company (which would be the point of a strike to reach something) only expedite the sealed fate of a wreck. Who cares if it happens tomorrow or in 3 months other than themselves as the employees of the said wreckage?

On wonders how it took so long. Some years ago AB had some very strange looking policies, from the outside. They dubbed a large number of flights via PMI or Berlin. I could buy an AB local ticket from ABC to TFS but I had to stop off in PMI, when I could buy a local ticket with local competition on a direct flight for less money. Guess which was there choice. Unless you were in PMI or Berlin there were not many interesting direct flights within EU; or so it seemed.
Then, at one time, before the long-haul crazy adventure, they were operating (I think) 4 different short-haul types when the competition were all operating single types and obviously lower cost. How could they compete and survive with that business model. Did they not then buy LTU long-haul routes and venture over the horizon before they had consolidated their short-haul base? And they were trying to offer a premium short-haul service for LoCo prices and a high cost base.
It did not seem a recipe for success many years ago. And I don't think pilot salaries had anything to do with the demise. It seemed a daft business plan years ago at a time when the strong contenders were consolidating their own cost bases & business model.

I think there is a misconception about the "Lufthansa" rescue. "Lufthansa" as the group of companies wants to come to the rescue, not "Lufthansa" as the airline. Lufthansa is a global company brand that includes something like a dozen separate airlines, only one of which is Lufthansa the airline (plus dozens of other non-airline companies). So it is a bit fanciful to assume by airberlin employees that they will be employed subject to the contract conditions of the Lufthansa group airline that pays the highest salaries. No sane investor in a bancrupt company would do that.

They are getting paid for three months from an insolvency fund and so should be fine. Just like almost anyone else, pilots are not career civil servants with guaranteed lifelong employment, so redundancy is a risk they share with all employees who have to pay bills, mortgages.

Calling in sick is reportedly a small group of captains on very generous former LTU contracts. They are not taking the "we enjoyed it while it lasted" (i.e. for decade since LTU disappeared) approach, but expect to keep the conditions with a future employer. With is quite understandable from their perspective - but realistically, they are not the ones calling the shots. What they apparently fear is that because of their fat cat salaries airberlin and the potential investor want to get rid of them by way of closing down longhaul ops which would give airberlin the opportunity to make them lawfully redundant before the company is taken over by someone else. Bit like brushing up the high maintenance bride...

The amount of money guaranteed however is less than half of the normal salary for pretty much all pilots at air berlin. So no, their pay isn't guaranteed.

Again, not entirely correct. Yes, there are quite a few ex LTU captains in that group, but they are not alone there by far. And they do not have better contracts than the rest of the airberlin pilots, in fact the last LTU contract is around 40% less pay than the current airberlin contract. And since airberlin has no exclusive longhaul fleet but rather only MFF (mixed fleet flying) there is no way one can fire only those old LTU guys, however, prospective buyers of parts of the company could of course cherry pick, which they cannot anymore if a normal germany procedure called Sozialauswahl (social selection) would be followed. And the sick out is only about going into that social selection procedure, which is governed by employment law.

Doesn't airbelrin cover the balance between the agreed salary and the statutory cap in order to stop the pilots from leaving the sinking ship?

So bottom line is that it is about one group of pilots against the other? And those on strike would rather sink the whole ship than keep it afloat if as a result the other group of pilots has better chances to get hired? I don't see how management can cave in here - if the striking pilots get their will, the majority of non-striking pilots will see their chances of employment with an investor shrinking.

A bit harsh of anyone to come on here to call out any AB crews trying to maintain their T&Cs given the strike record of LH's crews over the past couple of years.

Well, last time I checked Lufthansa never stood on the edge of the cliff...

The situation is hardly comparable.
The striking pilots are playing a very dangerous game IMHO - I understand that they might only have bad choices but it could backfire quite violently...