Come on and let’s think about it for a moment..

let’s say for one second that there are “captains willing to go to BA for 20k” then they:
- Have to pass selection
- background check
- Have their licenses checked, validated
- Have to be Issued a UKCAA licence
- Induction course / CRM / Groundschool
- OCC
- Security course / airport badge
- line training

imagine you have to plan this for 1000plus pilots while other airlines are doing the same. How are you going to get simulator availability? This will be a total nightmare.

This applies to type rated pilots. Flying Clog’s “A380 Captain” has to do a complete type rating!!

BA used to fully fund their cadet's flight training, would you be able to let me know what the Union did to maintain that arrangement?

But what is this 'going rate'? - if the airline can find people to sit in the 2 seats at the front of the plane for £50k and £25k respectively then surely that is the going rate. £200k and £100k might have been the case 20 years ago but the industry has moved on. As a previous poster pointed out, it used to be the case where the airlines paid for training but at the same time they restricted access to that training so that only a few people were lucky enough to become a pilot and thus supply never exceeded demand - now the system is more 'democratised' and anyone with the money can fulfil their dream.

Is it likely that we are going to go back to the old system and wage levels? - I'd suggest probably not so I think people need to get used to the new normal and decide whether aviation is the career for them.

That is the problem, as for the last few years Flying ability is taking a back seat to anyone who has or can gain access to money to pay to fly. Look at what has happened in some countries, as long as you have a bit of paper that says it is a licence does not necessarily mean that person has been correctly trained and certified as a pilot or even engineer for that matter!

Not really. WW started this abuse well before the 14 day quarantine idea was introduced. It isn't killing the industry either. The virus is doing that all by itself.

Err no. The governments reaction to the virus is killing the industry.

A fair point, which is why the outcome of the consultations / negotiations / call them what you will is so crucial. If the unions can succeed in securing the long term contracts now, that sends a message that the going rate is the current rate, as a minimum.

I hear Aer Lingus are on the cusp of of a deal with their pilots / IALPA that doesn’t see any changes to contracts, rather short term part time deals, and also no redundancies.

This has to strengthen our hand, surely? It creates precedent for IAG. However, as someone has pointed out on the Balpa forums, stand by to be fed all the usual excuses from the BACC why this can’t apply to us as we get served up a wholly unappetizing sh*t sandwich.

I think that the BACC are scared to death of what they have to recommend to you. It could cost the existence of BALPA.

Ireland has a 14 day quarantine in place too, so that can’t be used as an excuse by BA to slash jobs.

They don't need an excuse. They can do what they like. At the end they have you guys by the short and curly's. You have nothing to bargain with at all right now. There are hundreds of guys with EASA licences, type ratings, experience on type, recency, Police clearance etc returning from the middle east needing "any" job, and now. Anybody suggesting that BALPA have chips to play is deceiving himself.

WW is in an awfully difficult position as well. I'm sure he is s........ himself. He wants to take this opportunity to roll over your salaries, he'll never get this chance again. However he knows that he may need to make real this threat of firing the lot of you, but then how in the heck does he get enough of you/ex-Emirates guys back into the flight deck to restart operations in August or September.

MOL would just fire you. No messing around. You'd already be gone.

This is Interesting. What is going to happen??

A lot of BS on here.

As crap as the CAA are, there has to be a question mark over the AOC if the company decide to "go nuclear". Particularly if training appointment holders are sacked too. It just doesn't seem like a likely scenario to me, but who knows. We're in uncharted territory.

The most likely outcome is the most obvious one. A crap deal, but BALPA recommends it and it goes through with a decent margin, despite all hell breaking loose on the other forum.

Yes. That is what will happen.

Trainers would obviously not be sacked. Those guys would get a pay rise.

You seriously think we’d step up to the plate if the rest of our colleagues had just been given the boot? I can tell you for a fact it wouldn’t happen..

Dont feed the troll folks...

I've been through this, you'd save your own skin. Whatever you say on PPrune.
As Northern Monkey said, it's not the likely scenario. It is however going through the mind of WW.
In reality BALPA have to recommend whatever WW decides or risk "the nuclear option".

GMB and UNITE aren't doing what WW asks so why should BALPA?

So can we passengers expect 30 000+ really p*ssed off customer facing staff, a poisonous atmosphere on the flight deck if people are brought in to replace refusenics, and about 12 000 really angry people with cars to bring T5 to a halt on a daily basis for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure WW has thought this through.

Compare and contrast with the Aer Lingus proposals.

Dont feed this troll.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this - but do people really want the old way? No one should have any barriers to employment, regardless of background, although with the new way, having to hit the Bank of Mum & Dad is hardly a perfect system either.

Once the airline establishes a new normal for pay it will take a long time to work back up. If Captains are on £70 000 and F/Os £50 000 a year it will be difficult to justify any increase once things settle down. There won't be any shortage of quality applicants for pilot jobs and fares need to be kept down with consumers watching every penny. A request for a 30-40% pay rise in a couple of years time won't get much sympathy from anyone and wouldn't even be taken seriously if the airline is still losing money.

The terms and conditions we enjoyed were arrived at incrementally over a long period of time and whilst they may be reduced in a big chunk, they won't be given back in the same manner.

Apparently Aer Lingus have a temporary deal on the table; anyone know the details?

Does Irish law (and Spanish law in the case of Iberia) protect them from the shafting that BA employees are facing?

Absolutely ridiculous figures being pulled out of people's arses on this thread. Do you seriously think any UK airline would get away with reducing long term pilot salaries by more than 50%? Especially an airline as heavily unionised as BA? I'm no fan of Balpa, they are weak at the core and don't have the cojones of their French/Spanish or American contemporaries, but if you really think BA would get away with Captain salaries of 70k you are an idiot, and good luck finding anyone who would fly 900 hours a year for 30 years for that money and live within a commutable distance to LHR.

On the other hand, it's odds on that Pilot Salaries will be slashed in the coming days. So if people quoting 70k are idiots then what number would you put on it?

If 70k is your figure then that would have to be for a 50% contract, 450 hrs a year or month on/ month off. We are already on the other side of this pandemic, don't be fooled by the doom and gloomers.

What planet are you on .The Economy and passenger numbers wont start up like the press of a switch.

Ok. So BALPA and WW are having tea and biscuits and talking about the weather.

It's understandable that people don't want to face up to the reality, but ultimately it comes down to supply and demand. Airlines could literally offer any salary they choose to at the moment and there will be a huge excess of applications. £70k for a captain would seem about right as it's about the same as tube drivers make when overtime is taken into account.

As I previously posted, the goal is the minimum acceptable level of safety for the lowest possible cost. Highly restrictive SOPs and very reliable aircraft that are relatively straight forward to operate the vast majority of the time mean that there is no need to pay top whack for highly experienced people, when the job can be done to the minimum regulatory standard by far less experienced and cheaper pilots. It's simply a bonus for the airlines that for the foreseeable future they'll be able to get the highly experienced people for the same cost as the newbies.

I'm guessing at £84,456 for all.

The soft underbelly for an attack on salaries was always there, but no-one cared because "first they came for....."

If you're going to pluck a figure from the air, that, to me, looks like a good one. The question is, would BALPA collapse, if they offered that to the membership?

Can but hope! (Cue incoming)!

I'm on the same planet as the one where the financial markets are pricing a swift recovery. IAG have been making profits in the billions for years on your current contracts, FD and CC both, and at the first sign of a tough year you lot want to bend over and take less than half? By that token if you think it acceptable for a BA captain to get paid 70k in 2021, then I would argue they should get paid 250k in 2023 when you can be sure IAGs profits will be in the billions again. Look how many ASR's and close calls happen on a daily basis in a career that is still sought after, start paying Captain's 70k and watch the incident rate skyrocket as people stop giving a ****. Also clearly none of you are involved in training, it's hard enough for highly motivated professionals when you put them under a bit of pressure, let's see what happens when you are scraping the barrel.

No, but the airline would.

The shareholders would then have an EGM and sack the board.

' it's about the same as tube drivers make when overtime is taken into account.'

Are you seriously comparing flightcrew to a tube driver? If you are a pilot then you're a disgrace to the profession; if you aren't you are talking through your nether region.

At the moment I'm sitting at home not having flown for 3 months and getting about 45% of what I was getting before. If company forecasts are correct, around the end of the year I would be back to about 80% of previous earnings. I consider myself lucky to still be employed with the prospect of returning to flying, many former colleagues who left for better jobs in the Middle East or China have been laid off with no return insight.

Whilst BA is in a better position than hub airlines in the ME, profitable operations are still a long way off. An interim deal will probably be needed whilst the company is haemorrhaging money, similar to British Leyland in the late 1970s. Whilst the immediate pandemic is coming to an end, the economic effects are just beginning. If my income returns to its previous level by the end of next year I'll be surprised and delighted.

Striking pilots would have very little public sympathy as their demands would be seen as totally unrealistic and unreasonable. Picketing the terminals at Heathrow holding signs demanding £130 000 a year whilst the company is losing millions a day won't get much support. Militant unions such as the miners, printers and Australian domestic pilots in 1989, have been broken before, and the Aussies were in a much stronger position when they started then BA pilots are in at the moment.

Australia is a vast country heavily dependent on air travel for domestic transportation where as BA domestic is virtually negligible. For any international BA flights, pax can simply switch to any number of competing airlines. Ansett and Australian airlines had to get pilots to move to Australia and convert their licences, where as the UK has hundreds of unemployed pilots already type rated and ready to go.

Get the best deal you can in the present circumstances and once normality returns it's time to push for a return to previous conditions or better.

Just ignore him. He is here to wind us up. He is not alone.

You're totally missing the point. Very obviously Piloting an aircraft and managing a crew requires a much higher level of skill than driving a tube train.

Unfortunately in the UK that will not justify higher salaries for two reasons:

1. Unconstrained training of new Pilots meaning a flood of young Pilots coming to the market (It is a market). From next year, those young British Pilots will be limited to a UK job. British Pilots do form the majority of Pilots on a per country basis in the EU.
Even amongst US part 121 Airlines a 4 year degree is generally required to be a Pilot.

2. No strong Pilot Unions.

If I started an Airline right now in the UK and offered £30,000 per year for an experienced Captain, I would be overwhelmed with applications. Mostly from middle East and Asia returnees. These people are high quality though. Their safety records are not lower than BA.

For those who don't watch the news, Beijing is back in lockdown due to an outbreak of COVID - 19 with hundreds of flights grounded.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...cancelled.html

Any youngsters here in their 30s and 40s would do well to research the Australian Pilots dispute of 1989, those of us in our 50s and 60s remember it. Avoid having a battle with Willie Walsh at the moment, everything is in his favour and you will lose. If everyone gets sacked the union will take years to recover and re-establish itself with the new pilot body. The current times are unprecedented and sacrifices need to be made, bend a bit to avoid being broken. Stick together and when the good times return you will have a strong and established union already in place to do some hard bargaining and make up lost ground.

This is simply taking a realistic view of the situation, nothing is in the pilots favour at all at the moment.

BTW The leader of the Australian Pilots in 1989 spent the next 5 years unemployed and eventually got a co pilot job in Indonesia.

Possible BS.


1. Where is this ‘flood’ of young pilots? Who would enter the profession now? The British ones are not limited to the UK; there are things called ‘work-visas’ for anyone who sees beyond the EU.

2. So what. Wasn’t it ever so?


How would your start-up airline cope with training demand when this is happening (already approaching 50% recovery?):

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....78e89235c.jpeg