Well my VR quote was equivalent to about a year in the CRS bidding for short haul and close to 2 years if not bidding for short haul.

Wishing BA staff all the best from an AF colleague. It seems like the frontline experienced BA team are getting screwed. Sorry it has come to this - always respected your professionalism. Keep your heads high.

This is only stage one.
If things do not get back to some sort of normality by December,expect another round of negotiations in the new year.

Always good to inject a bit of negativity Norman whenever possible.

Looks to me that after the 270 (or less) it is the junior Gatwick skippers that will get hit the hardest. Choice between volunteering for demotion (very large pay cut) and no priority to return to LHS or CRS and being bottom of the pile with large pay cut.

This is the drum I’ve been banging on their behalf on the Balpa forums; Gatwick pilots have been completely screwed over by not treating the Airbus fleet as one list. As soon as this is over and I have an operational seat I’m of the mind to leave Balpa over it. Some of the junior(ish) Gatwick skippers (ie seniority 3100-3300 or so) will probably have the seniority for RHS LH, with the drop in take home pay I hesitate to say negligible but certainly isn’t that massive at that point. Will just depend on the individual’s motivations re their command and their family life at home as to whether that’s a viable option for them.

At that seniority they would have got LHR C32L in previous bids perhaps in this supplementary bid too.

I did not hold Balpa in high regard, but even I have to admit that without them I think we would have seen CR into the 800 number. Better to have some representation than none at all.

Second round.........don’t even go there, but be sure of one thing. Don’t expect the same patience or acceptance of any deal other than the company proposal. Best just keep our heads down and fingers crossed.

Normality is forecast, at the earliest, 2023. This is clearly just the first round. You're just very lucky that BA is "too important to fail" in post Brexit Britain.

Have you seen the FAN Rex? It reads ‘operational preference will be given to A320 LGW to A320 LHR (Captains and First Officers)’. Is that not doing precisely what you want?

If you want to protect your pay, do you not just bid for all heathrow commands before your FO bids? You won’t have the seniority for a long haul command, so you will get your desired C32L, or an FO position with command pay. (I highly doubt 3100 will be senior enough for a long haul FO position with 140 more senior FOs on the 747, nearly 100 on the A380, and loads on the 777 which is also in surplus).

How many C32L vacancies do you reckon there’ll be? I would wager close to none.

GS-Alpha

As far as we know the A380s are coming back. Not all immediately but nowhere near 100 A380 FOs will have to move, 777 won’t be in surplus in the RHS after all the redundancies. There’s a lot of P77L in the bottom 330. The senior 747 FOs won’t get moves to the A350 ahead of LGW P1s bidding for the same seat, the short courses clause will see to that. So I stand by my comment that those guys will have the seniority for a LH seat.

I think before you bid guys I suggest you read the prospectus for the €2.75B rights issue.
There is no issue price yet but there is a major section on fleet adjustments!
One thing that stands out it states 53 L/H a/c are to depart by the of 2020 ie another 23 a/c over and above the 744. It also mentions there is a possibility that early leases may be terminated
What it means I am not sure as it does apply to the whole group not just BA

There are 2 early 777s also going, plus all of the Iberia A340 fleet. IAG is not just BA.

14 Iberia A340 ?

I think I must have misunderstood what you meant by this Rex. Are you instead saying you think LHR 320 pilots should be able to be displaced by more senior LGW pilots so that they end up in the CRS rather than the LGW pilots?

We will presumably gain some insight into the pilot requirements on each fleet, sometime in the coming days. I predict a larger C32L requirement than you think, but that is only based on my suspicion that there is going to be a lot more short haul flying at LHR.

I seriously wonder if there is going to be a LGW fleet as such I think BA is giving up on LGW as witnessed by all the current flights being switched to LHR until November at least, plus the CEO of LGW has said S Terminal is to be closed until next spring
i mentioned earlier about the additional L/H a/c 23 of them are going by end of 2020. I suspect it could in fact be BA 777 not the Iberia 340 mentioned. If this is the case that about 40% of that fleet I believe?. Needs some thought.

Again, if you read the Q2 results presentation, the 53 aircraft as broken down as: 32 B747s, 15 A340s, 4 A330s, 2 B777s.

And why do you suspect BA 777 as opposed to the already announced Iberia 340 ? You must have a reason for this suspicion surely. Or are you just trying to create further despondency ?

We all fly the same aircraft just from a different runway. I’ve heard on the grapevine that the only reason Balpa split the A320 fleet was because there are 60-70 LGW P1s above 2981 on the MSL (the start of the BMI pilots). My source didnt expand on that but clearly there’s some politics involved in that decision.

I’ve said it many times but there will be many P32Ls who are now redundant that will have their seat back filled by more senior pilots. Isn’t that the ultimate form of displacement?

I am not sure all of that information is correct Rex. The bmi pilots have DOJ bmi for service so are much more senior than their MSL number. There is also command protection from the integration so even if there are more senior pilots at LGW they would not displace those protected commands. This is all legally binding so opinion is not involved in the decision making. I would be pretty sure this is a BA thing not a BALPA one. It’s been seen before, geographical location used as the primary selection because it is very difficult to challenge and legally very secure for the company.

What needs to be done is to give priority to 320 pilots to move to 320 LHR regardless of seniority.