British Airways and 'The Delta' Pay Cut.
 

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British Airways and 'The Delta' Pay Cut.

Can any kind soul please explain the mysterious BA Delta ? Asking for a friend's offspring who has the required qualifications for DEP. Our tame mole tried to explain in the pub last night but he lost us very quickly.

I tried looking it up but all I got was how much Delta airline pilots get paid.

More specifically -

1. Can anyone quantify it ?

2. Is it a permanent pay cut, or does it get restored sometime soon ?

3. Does it also apply to new hires at Heathrow and Gatwick (Euroflyer) ?

4. Is it applied to or included in the payscales shown in the current BA DEP job ads ?

Thanks in advance - .... LFH
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1 I can’t
2 not permanent but so long it’s as good as
3 probably, not PRP new hires though I believe
4 no

Its the ’delta’ (difference in) pay between the technically ‘redundant’ pilots (LGW/747) and the pilots the union wanted to be redundant, as the ones the union wanted to make redundant were all on lower salaries hence the cost ‘delta’
most current pilots seem to be unhappy about it, but it’s what was passed in the 2020 vote which they voted yes to.


don’t take this as gospel but it’s what I make it to be.

cirren

We were led to believe it would be a very temporary pay cut , until the end of Covid, not to drag on for decades…….

Ok potted history to this thing. It gets complex. Nearly the entire pilot bunch don’t fully get it either so you’re not alone. We just see money vanishing out of our payslips shown as a chunky “deduction”.

They came to us in 2020 and wanted to fire (as part of a wish list of 12000 staff) an entire fleet. The 747 fleet. Our agreements stood to blow away like farts. When I say “they came to us” be under no illusion how they were speaking to us on webinars.

The Union and all were horrified. If this happened it meant the end of seniority at BA not to mention the plight of fellow workers tossed aside. So the pilot workforce clubbed together and created a pool for as many pilots in the scope of BA’s rifle

The pool was entirely funded by the pilots via a chiselled paycut. By funded I mean, the hand out money given to these pilots to live on, was entirely funded by the pilot workforce, not BA. BA wanted nothing to do with these miscreants they wanted off the pitch. So long, thanks for all the fish. Pretty much. However, BA not believing their luck at this far out pool idea, still wanted to have the ability to cherry pick a return at some point, if they fancied. A bit like dumping someone and keeping them on speed dial.

This pool was capped in size. So BA also made redundant (with no pilot funded money at all) an additional 250 pilots who were not allowed to be in this pool (work that out, they weren’t even paying for this pool themselves and still put their beak in as to who can be in it). Note. They now need everyone back. They. Now. Need. Everyone. Back.

And here’s the kicker. On top of this the firm took an extra pay cut out of everyone for the fact they didn’t get to enjoy firing the whole entire 747 fleet. That bit is in true BA fashion termed “the delta”. Its basically BA charging the pilots to keep our agreements. They wanted to ignore seniority. We didn’t. They charged us for it. Now the Ronnie Corbett punchline…

This year they wanted ALL the former 747 pilots back AND the ones they fired - the ones they wanted in the waste basket. And oh yes, they’re still charging everyone a fee for the fact they had to take back the 747 pilots. The same pilots they actually now need back! If you can find logic in there you’re better than any of us. I bet their laughing their heads off. Confused.com? We all are. This fee, the delta, is due to roll on donkies. It’s due to expire sometime when the sun in the sky becomes a red dwarf. It morphs around 4-10 percent depending on which way the wind is blowing.

You could hear the “nice one centurion!” back slaps from the board room from the North of England to Cornwall. They probably had XTC making plans for Nigel playing on a turntable as they popped the corks.

Answers to Q

1/ The calculation is not widely known. It’s mysterious to most of us. We find out pay packet to pay packet what it is. Estimated to hit approx 10 percent next year then slowly drift down

2/ Not technically but effectively is as it stands. Put it this way, a bank would take it as permanent for a mortgage application given the unspecified ending date. No one knows specifically when it’ll end. Estimated to go on years

3/ This one is down to BA. I can’t say what they’ll do.


4/ I haven’t seen the advert but if there is not mention of a deduction I’d guess and say it won’t include the delta in the given figures. I don’t know.

1. Can anyone quantify it ?
No. It's calculated yearly, 2022's delta is 4.1%. 2023 will be the highest, estimated up to 10%. From there it reduces slowly as the ex-CRS pilots retire.

2. Is it a permanent pay cut, or does it get restored sometime soon ?
It will be zero once the last pilot who was in the CRS leaves the company. Probably 30 years or so.

3. Does it also apply to new hires at Heathrow and Gatwick (Euroflyer) ?
I understand it applies to BA mainline newhire pilots. But not to LGW Euroflyer newhire pilots.

4. Is it applied to or included in the payscales shown in the current BA DEP job ads ?
I was not aware they had put payscales in the ad.

I saw this on twitterBritish Airways Pilot Recruitment campaign - the what you need to know prior to applying.

A long thread, make a brew or open a cold one first! 🪡🧵

Firstly, this is fantastic news! Signs that the over zealous 2020 cuts were largely wrong and that the pessismism of ICAO growth forecasts has been exposed. Should a deep recession be predicted, BA would not be making this move. However, some background….

In 2020 various levels of unpaid leave were agreed by unions overnight due to incredible limited timescales provided to them by BA to act in order to stave off the immediate effects of the near absolute shut down of aviation. Then an HR1 redundancy process began….

This came after the outgoing COO and Director of Flight Ops explicitly told pilots they were not after their terms, pay or jobs….

BALPA were approached by BA with a list of pilots they wanted to give notice of redundant too and wanted BALPA’s approval. This meant the entirety of the 747 cadre, A320 LGW Capts and a large swathe of the A380 fleet…

This was in direct contravention of our agreements with BA over the handling of such isssues.

The pilot body were consulted over a period of time and we agreed to after much intense negotiation to come up with a MPE of this total number of heads. This limited the actual redundancies to the most junior after all early retirements etc were accounted for.

Not every application for ER was accepted by BA. Over a hundred left and those left with no fleet held in a pool with surviving pilots sacrificing pay to find a % of their pay.

Eventually the Furlough scheme aided this package. Due to us daring to defend our agreements, Pilots had to fund the difference that BA had lost out on in not being able to fire their most expensive pilots. This ‘cost’ is the DELTA.

In the meantime BA had well and truly earned it’s parliamentary label of “a national disgrace”, it’s actions condemned on both sides of the house in 2020.

As governments relaxed their travel bans and lifted their metaphorical iron domes the travel sector has exploded. Aircraft being stood up from long term storage faster than expected and furloughed staff being brought back into the fold as quickly as could be accommodated.

During this time natural attrition has also occurred of the most expensive pilots (retirees)….

Fast forward and we are now in a situation where the airline is reliant on volunteers going through extra mile, offers to buy back leave, offering 1.5 times the overtime rate of pay (it’s termed and works differently to overtime pay but in effect is just that).

Still though they insist we are too expensive. We are so horrendously expensive they need to cut our pay but a variable amount, why is unclear given the offers to buy back leave and offer enhanced overtime rates. Clash is back baby!

We are in fact so expensive that we need more pilots now to ADD to the salary bill!The DELTA is therefore one thing and one thing only, a fiscal punitive measure for us daring to defend agreements that you may well become reliant on during your tenure at BA.That’s the background.

Now for some truths about working here at present…..

Due to a recent rejection by BALPA members to fix and therefore extend the length of the delta, ALL DEPs joining BA WILL be exposed to it. Otherwise a PP3 320 FO would take home less than a PP1 320 FO! the only exempt group are the PRP pool who were made redundant, most are back.

The delta is not fixed, but variable month by month and BA with BALPA have to both agree the figures after a quarterly review of where we are, number that have retired or otherwise left the business etc.

Your BASIC PAY is therefore VARIABLE and THIS will affect your mortgage applications with a large number of providers. The other variable pay elements also have a history of causing issues with some but basic pay is key!

You will also have the delights of JSS to contend with. On paper it looks promising and exciting, sure it’s no Bidline, but the theory on paper works. The reality is very different.

We are several years into JSS now and every month is an utter frustration as the roster is published and the ‘reasons report’ along side. Every month sees even the most senior having valid rosters binned due to ‘global constraints’.

These constraints vary month my month as BA commercial tweak the schedules during a bid run, forcing re run after rerun. Roster repair occurs and 8/10 times or so you end up with garbage.

You will work most weekends for eternity. Consider that in your worry/life balance assessment. We used to get weekend points to offset the chance of reserve assignment. That is now in the past. The most junior still doing the lion share of reserve (fair) but also weekends too.

Most trips end up with a late finish and early start after two or possibly three local nights. Not any different to EZY/Wizz/RYR/EXS et al. If you commute it makes it harder. Hotel prices are now through the roof constantly. From £34 to £87pn average on crew rates etc.

Nightstops are pretty much all min rest with a few exceptions and stand over days. In time it does slightly improve, until the next big upset in aviation when all agreements are scrapped again. It is best not to get overly excited about it.

The annual bid is not worth thinking about until the end of your engagement freeze. You will now be on SH for a considerable length of time as the company has demonstrated what it culls when the going gets tough.

The oldest fleet and the market segment with the stiffest competition, not rocket science.

So everyone is now bidding for the youngest LH fleet. Those on it won’t leave! A BALPA pay survey in the past weeks has demonstrated this.

Be prepared to do the same work as EZY for less money and a variable basic pay. The delta will eventually leave, but you’ll be staying on the 320 for a good 8 years. We won’t leave Longhaul and those on the 777 will only go to another younger LH fleet.

BA have and will pass you over in your bigs for a rated DEP onto the 350/777/380/787, past form here but there is a process that would increase your pay whilst you continue to sit on the 320.

Staff travel, good if you can ever use it. The HAL situation won’t last forever. Also prone to going horribly wrong and becoming expensive, be warned! Time and the ability to be flexible pays the best dividends with the system.

We have an excellent culture of looking out for each other with it where and when we can.

Pensions - the BAPP, a good pension considering what is currently available in the sphere of UK airline employment, just sadly with Aviva who are well known to have the highest fees in the business at present, but in terms of contributions as a DEP it is good.

In short don’t be hoodwinked with glossy catchy terms and hollow recruitment drive promises. Lifestyle and home work balance are critical in this industry and you learn more and more the longer you are in this madhouse we call aviation.

Longhaul is good, tiring and destroys your body but it is fun. Short haul
Is relentless stress. Is it worth it or is holding out for LH elsewhere a better option? Early commands pay dividends when companies struggle and you need to leave a sinking ship.

You may well astute enough to notice plenty of current pilots deeply unhappy on Twitter et al over the state of affairs at BA. We too were once outsiders who thought ‘how on early do they not know how good they have it?!’ Then we joined!

It isn’ BALPA doing this to us, it is the relentless assaults by Pilot Managers and the SMT. You too will come to be jaded.

For those who’ve been made redundant and are still looking, get in there and apply! I won’t stop anyone giving up their current seniority position or pay point or command in order to join, but be wary it is an incredibly toxic environment here at present.

Ask the difficult questions and see how willing they are to respond honestly, it might just save your your sanity and mental health.

So get in there and apply, even if you decide to turn them down it is great to be exposed to the process in order to be better prepared for the times it is worth getting in here. This is good news and for those that don’t mind the above, go for it, you will all be welcome here.

But do so with open eyes and an open mind. Good luck to you all and best of luck with the application and selection stages. It’s truly isn’t all bad but the grass is not always greener, it can be found to be tinder dry. Plus we no longer have job security at BA and they know it!
Where does this leave BA pilots?
On average, in 2023, pilots in other UK airlines will be on 105.6% so far of 2020 pre-Covid pay based on known pay rises in 2022 and 2023.
This excludes airlines pay increments, share schemes, and any one-off bonus. *source BALPA*
On the other hand, BA pilots will be on 90-95% of 2020 pre-Covid pay, depending on the delta in 2023. At a minimum, this puts us on average 11% behind all UK airlines. It could be as much as 16% below the UK airlines' average.

Outstanding post from Tubbylinton. One point made there I think is crucial is due the large recruitment bulge 7 years ago you’re now hearing a lot of opinion from people like you, once outside wondering what everyone is banging on about. You’re now hearing mixed reviews fed back. Like tripadvisor. Those people worked elsewhere prior to BA


When you join, you’re often hear trotted out it’ll get better with seniority. What gets better? The coffee? The staplers in CRC? The money goes up. Well amazing, how much money do you need vs your happiness and homelife? Janet and John jumpers for goal posts and bidline Atlantic barrons are gone. Forget it man, your future is different. What bits of you are you willing to sell? I can’t speak for SH. On Long haul, the rosters don’t really drastically better as you get senior anyway. It’s a bit of a trumped up myth. It’s not like CAP drops for seniors or magical insanely high credit trips appear from a secret special trip box where they keep the functioning staplers. It’s the same flavour of it all to be honest. Maybe an extra day off than junior due pinching the odd higher credit trip and the odd extra weekend off. Nicer destinations if that’s still on your important list after 20 years with a family back home.

It’s all much of a muchness though. It’ll take you centuries to get to that point anyway. FT it’s grinding and relentless. It’s an airline that dreams of getting you to 900. So far agreements can shield that, but for how long? Those agreements are being attacked year after year: it’s like an army relentlessly trying to bust through a castle wall. They’re not letting up or getting bored of firing anytime soon.

LH on the wrong fleet and you’ll be flying trip/2 off/trip before finally getting to maybe 4 off and you sigh relief. Pre covid on the 747 and 777, 6 trips a month was not uncommon. Most weekends gone except for leave. Full time you’ll live for your leave. The mistake people who’ve never flown LH make is counting days off like they do at their SH carriers. That’s not just days off, that’s your entire time at home. Your life. And 2 midweek days off after a LH trip is 1 day feeling Ill with jet lag, doing washing then going away again. You need decent blocks off between LH trips. LH with 2 days off after seems like a grand old time at first, then it hits a few years in. If you’ve an early start and live a few hours away you’ll give over a large amount of your final day off packing your things then travelling to sit in depressing faceless hotel you’re paying for the night prior to work. #LHRissues


SH is.. because it’s based at LHR, kind of the worse of both worlds unless you live outside the perimeter fence. A lot want off SH like they’re covered in ants for a reason. But I’m led to believe from ibid that very senior FOs on SH are making a good go of getting regular weekends off.

The co culture here. It’s got an industrial factory feel and unsurprisingly pompous and quite superior. Not from your fellow crews, they’re generally great people and good as anywhere, just doing their best to get round a day cheerfully as can be. You go into work on a bus from the carpark stuffed with weary old faces travelling in on a Friday morning for a weekend away. You won’t recognise many faces. It’s a place of relative strangers.

Everyone on the line is decent as a whole. Usual odd balls like anywhere. The cabin crew tick along just fine with the pilots.

Everything drips with corporate policy as per large firms. It all operates on a ratchet system. If you hit a trip wire and trigger a policy you get “managed”. For that see “pretend to be nice” system kicks in where reverse psychology works

In the last half a decade it’s been constant. Every 6 months something else. Seeded lines, firm ignoring this or that thing. Bidline going, Give aways in return for not harming existing things, JSS, constantly fiddling with software and IT stuff, wanting yearly working hours to be adjusted (we call it CAP), more agreements being ignored by them.

Rosters are usually fantastically stable, when they don’t have reserve. Caveat- When half your monthly rosters contain reserves, then half your year is made from months that are incredibly unstable. I’m talking sitting in a carpark on a motorway waiting for a call for 21 days in a row (on LH) unstable. We DO have shorter reserves now - half as long. That JSS. No one at that firm has made it through from the bottom to retirement under JSS yet. You’ll be the first. Test pilots. Forget any info on pprune from years ago based solely on bidline, it’s dead.


If you live more than a few hours away from the South East, at local carrier and have a family, early thirties up I’d think carefully. Do not automatically rely on the old aviation sale of BA - best gig in town. It’s a stale mantra that hasn’t been effectively proof tested - people find it very hard to back of this place once they’ve some years chalked on the wall. It becomes a psychological barrier. End of the rainbow syndrome. Money wise perhaps just is the best gig particularly if you join in early twenties. But not to be too hippyish, you better put a price on home life and your health especially if commuting more than a couple of hours. You’ll be sitting as a tail end Charlie an awful long time, on a trajectory that no one has ever ridden ahead. Everywhere is crapper now, just got to choose your brand.

If you’re miserable in a bad bottom feeder company then no doubt it’s better here! But that’s not a great bar to set really is it.

If you’re somewhere half decent already that treat you well and your family and you are happy, but you might just be getting itchy feet..

​​​​​….choose wisely - it is somewhat of a Faustian pact you’re signing. Like everywhere

great information, but where did they get this comparison? What other UK airlines are they talking about?

This was shown in one tweet.† Deferred from 2021
* Virgin are reversing some of their scheduling changes in their 2022 pay deal.
** The recent agreement at Ryanair means pay restoration will be accelerated, with a view to full restoration by April 2023.
*** KLM has a pay cut related to government loans.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1fc9cd8ae.jpeg

I'm certainly not trying to pull the wool over the grim working environment that pilots have to endure at modern BA, however I'm sorry to say I don't agree with this. I've now had a chance to look over some iBid lines for junior SH guys at LHR. Blocks which are either four-five sectors over two days, six sectors split over three days, single ATH split over two days with a layover, couple of two sector days dotted in and out here and there. This in peak summertime is a pretty cushy roster considering these are the bottom of the pecking order. Granted, the fullas who I saw were rostered a duty or standby/TS on every weekend, so if that's of primary importance then it looks like it would be gruelling.

Also worth bearing in mind that EZY is still negotiating with BALPA for a historic pay deal that has been at FTA since 2018. That's the expected pay rise coming in 2022 (although still being delayed). Prior to any pay rise being agreed joining BA with 10% delta deduction would leave me with the same take home I get from EZY now before the addition of any flying or duty pay.

Current SH flying days are heavily impacted by service reductions due BA’s and HAL’s resourcing fubars. Thus they are not typical. In normal times there are almost no 1-sector days. Tours are usually 3/3, 3/2/3, 3/4/3, 3/2/2/3 etc with only occasional standovers. EASA limits apply minus 30 mins. Junior lines normally involve 6 days of 3/3s, near minimum rest at home and downroute for 6 days straight. Incredibly tiring. Also on a tour you seldom keep the same aircraft and can spend 2.5 hours at T5 waiting for your next plane to show up. With seniority day trips and 1 sector days are more possible. As stated above you won’t get weekends off for a few years.

Thanks for the info. Certainly makes a lot more sense

Twosugars - spot on. I was going to post something similar but you saved me the trouble.

FWIW I’m part time on a ‘high efficiency’ fleet, whatever that is, so I guess I’m in a better place than many. I also count myself as a glass half full person. Even so I’ve recently found myself looking at the recruitment offerings of Jet2 & Virgin and wondering “what if”…. It’s not a position I ever expected to be in, and speaks volumes to the way the BA machine grinds people down.

Thank you
 

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Thank you everyone for the fascinating replies. I can see why our mole is upset.

The pilots pay dispute has now reached the media as if it were a fait accompli -

and This link to a recent Employment Tribunal Judgment - sent to me by a well wisher - shows how BA dealt with one elected BALPA Rep during the ill-fated 2019 pilots' strike - https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribun...841-slash-2020 ... Note that he had to provide his own resources for his ET Claim.

Rather like the Mike Simkins v TCA case six years ago. Simkins wrote a book about it - 'Pulling Wings from Butterflies.' As they sometimes say "Where's balpa when you need them ?"

So if the Delta is to be reversed any time soon, it will require a heart or brain transplant for BA management, or another pilot strike, for which BA may be minded to use similar dirty tricks, having seemingly got away with the previous illegalities as noted in the above ET Judgment.

LFH

It is my view that the Delta will end. It will end due to to growing potential of legal challenge. This company employs pilots under a growing array of very separate contracts, and yet the delta does not differentiate. An FPP paying a training bond is also paying towards a PP24 senior pay packet, whose contract is separate and inaccessible. If the Delta was housed in each separate contracted group the challenge would be more difficult, but it isn’t…..we wait.

Tubby linton and Two sugars... couldn't have put it better myself. I never did understand the 'you're only junior once' - more like 'you're only junior once (per fleet, per seat)' which essentially means 4 times during the career being the most junior on the status list. Once per decade having to spend the next decade crawling your way up the list and earning a weekend off every 6 months. IMHO part time is the only good way of getting a good work/life balance at this place, with JSS. Quite a daunting prospect with quite so many years ahead of me. Maybe the orange seat I had 6 years ago would've been the better one to get comfy in.

Tubby and Two Sugars, thank you for explaining the intricacies of the 'Delta' and also some of the current frustrations.

I was one of the ~250 made redundant from BA in September 2020, being too junior to survive; I was booted out having aspired to join BA for over 10 years. Not being part of the company after that time, I'd only heard of the Delta from friends still at BA and no-one could tell me exactly what it was. Having read your explanations, I now understand (although I'm not sure it's legal). It's a further indictment on the continued broken relationship the management has with the pilot workforce.

Anyway, although I was 'happy' to be junior and bide my time, I won't be rejoining BA. Having seen it first hand and having used my time in the PRP to reflect on the realities of life at BA, I've decided it's not for me, especially over several decades of employment. I'm not bitter about it any more, I simply feel it's shame that what could be an amazing place to work, really isn't.

Skaterboi…..Your last sentence sums up what most staff think about BA. It could be the best place in the World to work, if it wasn’t for the awful, spiteful management. Much of what they do is nothing to do with money. Many of the decisions made are undefendable ,illogical, and cost the company money. BA would spend a Pound to save a penny.

What twosugars has written is so so correct and really needs to be passed on or made more public......

Thanks to all above for updating this old fart on the current situation.

Really sorry to hear the grim details of what management are attempting to do but sadly I'm not the least bit surprised.

ATB, Good Luck.