and giving us a single day over our miserly industry worst 108 days off would represent a restrictive and inflexible scheduling practice which would kill the model?

Sorry I don't buy it, not with the amount of unused stby. Come on Flybe, if being scrooge is part of your DNA, you can pay either industry bottom pay, or industry bottom lifestyle, not both. One needs to rise to compensate for the other. Surely you must realise that a significant number of people aren't prepared to put up with it anymore. These practices might have been acceptable when we were a small struggling minor player and it was all hands to the pump all the time just to survive. Try as you might there is going to be significant resistance from your workforce if you continue to attempt to roll out this exploitation model on the scale we operate now. This problem isn't going to go away.

I don't buy the 64 hours not being feasible - just absorb the extra 4 hours with one of the current standby crew.

If regional bases are going to close, they'll close whether or not our conditions improve - but no-one believes that their closure will meet the business model anyway (so it won't happen).

Jim and his managers are about to learn the hard way that change is needed on their part in order to get through these difficult times.
Ever since I have been with this airline there has been nothing but arrogance and aggression from our management toward pilots.......
"If you don't like it you know where the door is" (Mike Wood)
"If I'm not getting 900 hrs per year out of my pilots I'm not doing my job" (Jim French)
They constantly compare us to office staff and smaller airlines when the moment suits them.
Well, now they seem to be trying it with Jim McAuslan, that same arrogant tone is evident in this letter as it has in previous ones.....somehow though I think Mr McAuslan can see through it. :ok:

This is no longer about the pay rise, its all about who is seen to win. The offer that on the table is a fair. How much more does everyone want?
The company council keep changing the goalposts. We have a solution on the table of the resolution of the lates to earlies together with a minimum of 11% max of 12.5% over three years. This also goes on the pension & is compounded year on year. Yes we work hard, yes on occasions the plan changes & we pick up the disruption, together with the disruption payments.
I followed the company council advise on smart pensions all that happened was that I lost £320 pounds a year, my college that I flew with lost £600! How was that good advise? It didn't even pay for the subs!
Its time that the members took a look at what was on offer and stopped following an over exaggerated expectation by the cc. If this isn't grabbed we could potentially end up with nothing! THINK ABOUT IT!!

Why did the BALPA Company Council not report back? This is a really fair offer & I would like to have been consulted. There has been real progress made, effecting every base & every pilot. Why were the CC unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion. What do they want? I two will vote for this offer

I've just heard about the letter you all received today. Two questions for you.

Firstly, the 12/13 year offer had the pay rise as RPI +0.5% but a max of 4.5%. Why? Why would you vote for that? I know why it was offered!

Ok, nobody really knows what inflation is going to be in two years time but why restrict yourselves to a, potential, pay cut? The offers should be a minimum of RPI, full stop.

I hope none of you are forgetting that Frenchy got a 28.5% rise in the year that everybody else had a pay freeze? Don't worry, that's rhetorical;)

Secondly, why is the holiday pay still being used as part of the negotiations?! FFS it is a legal requirement that you get paid holiday pay. The cabin crew do and 35 quid an hour for delays.

It might just help your case on pprune if you could spell asymmetric properly.

assymetricdrift, When you joined flybe on the dash 8 you knew what you would earn or was it a surprise? What do you expect to earn? How much do you want the company to pay you?
Yes our wages are less than other airlines but have you not noticed several other airlines are also going down the same route. Pilots wages are getting less relatively. There are only a handful of jobs out there. Its not good but at some point we need to reach agreement. I would prefer flying than end up redundant!
The deal on offer from flybe at the moment exceeds the other airlines.

TCASIII Give it a rest. The offer from Flybe is poor. Their attitude is inexcusable. We are going on strike. Personally I'd rather work in mcdonalds and have some self respect left than put up with this !!!!.
No one signed a contract to get paycuts and help a handful of management get very rich. Your arguments are null and void.

No need to be facetious - Yes we all knew what the salary was for a given time frame i.e When I made the decision to join Flybe I knew that the salary was XXX and that the year after it would be XXX now that was it. There was no published pay scale for 2011,2012,2013 etc

Now almost everyone who has a job expects a pay rise annually in line with inflation most also expect a rise to reward loyalty and hard work. Now we as pilots at Flybe are on an incremental scale which I believe is our right we expect this, it's always been there and should remain permanently or until an appropriate alternative is agreed upon.

As pilots we know that bigger airlines with bigger aircraft pay more money. This is a fact. Flybe's pay scales are based on a small airline (see loganair pay ppjn). Flybe has over 700 pilots and approx 60 aircraft. they are no longer a shed sized airline. The directors earn £250-£600,000 per annum basic.

Therefore we as pilots expect our pay to reflect this. Also our colleagues over at Easyjet, Ryanair, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Jet2, Monarch, Virgin, Thomas Cook, and Thompson all earn way more than we do. Now yes they are bigger more profitable airlines so that's only right BUT our pay and lifestyle does not compare as it now should, we should be closer to them. The company are attempting to lower and not improve our t&c's. OK trainers and PBM's don't care as they earn £80k and are where they want to be. The rest of us are not. Most FO's are no in the base they want and are struggling financially. The financial struggle was expected but inflation is making it almost impossible. It needs to be sorted, this is why we have BALPA.

Easyjet have just had 4% on basic, 5% on extras. BA have had 4%. Ryanair have had nothing, (they are non union).

This attitude will eventually mean you will get paid NOTHING.

TCAS - I knew what it would be like in Flybe when I joined. I knew my belt would be tight and that I wouldn't be able to afford certain things in life that would make it more comfortable. I knew that I would struggle for the first years, and I did. I lived on a credit card, paid my rent and somehow made the ends meet. At one stage I was payingmore in interest on my credit card than I could actually pay back.

What needs to be considered is that this offer is LOSING us money - it is below RPI and that is how the company work - to minimise the overheads and what is the most expendable one? Crew!

I don't want much - I just want RPI but i'm fed up with small minded ignorant, lying, petty, idiots who take us for fools. RPI will do me fine...

TCASIII! If you believe the latest offer on the table as laid out in Jims letter regarding what was put on the table at ACAS. Just hang fire and if you are a BALPA member you will shortly receive an email stating what the offer was. Im told worse than the previous 2 offers! Always read the SMALL print!!

Let us all know when you have read the BALPA com and if you are still thinking its a fair offer???? :D

JW411, an utterly meaningless post. If an itinerant s in a username irks you so, might I suggest you become a proofreader and leave us to our discussion.

TCASIII,

Useful idiot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

show me one scrap of meaningful evidence that suggests redundancies in the near future. I also fail to see how money being taken from my pocket equates to a fair offer.

To be honest, most of this dispute now transcends pay and rostering and this current peasants' revolt is almost entirely of French and Strong's own making. Many people (naively in my view) were prepared to acquiesce and accept one of the offers, were it not for the arrogant and dishonest methods the company used to try and push them. They truly believe themselves to be smarter than anyone else and that we could never possibly have a. long memories and b. smart (though misspelled) users like assymetricdrift who are capable of dissecting a balance sheet.

Jim, Andy, sadly chaps, when you strip away your Astons and various other trappings, you are a double-chipped load controller and a smarmy college boy who both got lucky with Jack Walker's money and Willy Walsh's desperation. I'd take the money and run if I were you, we've a lot more smarts than you give us credit for.

My username is based purely on irony - that it was misspelt in one of the textbooks I was using when I was learning to fly.

Of course I know it's spelt incorrectly!

Management got a 28% pay rise - offered me 2% and that included my annual increment that I'd have recieved anyway =.3%

Jim got a million pound interest free loan to buy another home, its very hard for me to get a mortgage.

How about interest free loans to help us with flying debts??
Just a few cadets get a years break, the rest of us??

Some of us really do struggle to make ends meet at the end of the month!!

Maxed out, worn out and less than average conditions while management help themselves and pat themselves on the back while patronising the rest if us!!

You wonder why we are all p155ed off???? :mad:

Yesterday we get told buy the company that we have to many crews and they hint at letting people go then today we all get a message telling us we are probably aware we are quite short of crew. Would we want to work days off.

Whoops, I dont think everybody knows, maybe someone should tell Jim.

It must be nice to run a company that can’t afford to pay its employees an industry standard wage, make an attempt to improve their work life balance or even sort out the lates to earlies issue that those employees have already taken a pay freeze some years ago to pay for. Yet at the same time take a 30%+ bonus and million’s of pound’s of interest free loans!

It's quite simple really
 

It's quite simple really, we want more than 1 night a week to enjoy gigs/dinners out with the trouble and strife or just to chill out with a beer and friends in the pub because guess what Jim - some of us would like to have a life outside Flybe...

We want a salary commensurate with our experience and other operators of similar aircraft. The average year 1 F/O salary of a Q400 driver across various Q400 operators is as follows

Austrian Arrows E37800
Augsberg E36200
Luxair E55200
Air Baltic E34500
Wideroe E52000
Flybe E28275


As can be seen our pay is massively uncompetitive with directly comparable operators and the rosters - finishing 11pm Friday night and having to get up at 4am Monday morning are beyond appalling. The Captains pay compares equally unfavourably.

I've yet to fly with anyone who doesn't intend to support a strike. People have quite literally had enough of the pot noodles, nutri-grain bars for breakfast, the lack of any kind of reasonable lifestyle and the relentless and exhausting barrage of 4 sector days stretching to the horizon with only a one and a half day weekend to break them up. Couple that with pay scales that would humiliate a lorry driver and you have a recipe for a Summer of discontent.

Sorry for going off-topic here but just out of curiosity do Flybe offer reduced hours contracts?

Oh sweet Jesus, there's another can of worms!

Yes they do but if for example you go 75% you wil work all your 5 days on.
A good 20 - 25 hours per week x4!!!!

A captain will then get a similar salary to a seniorish f/o.

I would like to thank my PBM for printing off the letter from JF to BALPA. Our toilets at my base were not attended to yesterday and as such we ran out of loo roll. I found the contents of Jim Frsnch's letter most useful to wipe my arse with. Thanks again Jim, you saved me from an emabarrasing moment.

I hear on the grapevine that JF and his lapdog are going to be visiting bases soon.

What do you think? Repeated verbal diarrhea? Going over the BS that he's already written.

Pleading? Subtle threats? More scare tactics? Maybe a willingness to actually do something about this situation ha ha?

Is it even worth your effort to go and see him? Let the IA thing pan out and let them shove it?

I support the BALPA advice re approaches from PBMs and now JF: politely refer them to BALPA - that is who they should be negotiating with right now.

I strongly recommend in the light of current developments that all pilots - BALPA members or not - have a thorough read of the Flybe policy on Harassment & Bullying.

Any attempt by the PBMs or any senior management to intimidate or threaten staff, however subtly, should be met with formal grievances. In the case of a director, this complaint should be sent to a non-executive director. Personally, I would write to all of them, and then ensure the same issue is raised at the Flybe AGM on 8 September.

They don't like it up 'em Captain Mainwaring!

Totally agree, Jim has had over a year to sort this out and now that we are close to IA all of a sudden he's running around wanting to talk to pilots.
Sorry Jim but it's too late for that, you can now deal with BALPA, I won't be making the effort to see you. :=

Motion seconded.

Ram it.

Jim may be out and about, but it's the same old rhetoric.

Flybe is unique, that's why you can't compare it to any other company or airline.
Small bases are good.
People roster more efficiently than the computer.
No one is really leaving ( so why bother doing anything)
The dash is more technically unreliable than any ejet or airbus, but it will remain the backbone of Flybe.
He's not bothered about the share price, just wants to run Flybe as a business.
More pay, you'll be lucky.
:ugh:

Evening all. Long-time listener, first-time caller!

I for one can completely understand why BALPA didn't recommend the latest "offer" It's all fur coat and no knickers!

I'm right at the bottom of the pile and, therefore, money is tight. I was phoned the day before yesterday asking me to come in on my first day off. I'd already done six days so that would have been my seventh in a row. I could really use the extra cash but, as this was my first run of three days off in three months, I felt I could use the time off more than I could use the money. Not to mention I was fairly irritated to have been asked to work because they were "desperate" only the day after receiving a letter telling me how lucky I was to have a job when we were selling aircraft but not getting rid of anyone. I frequently work 6 and 2, lates to earlies and I'm knackered. And before anyone says that I knew what I was getting myself into before I signed on the line let me say that I don't think I did know. And really, in all honesty, how many people do know what they're getting themselves into when they're fresh out of the sausage factory, bright eyed, enthusiastic and delighted to be getting the chance to live the "dream"? Feel Like You're Being Exploited? I know I feel like my goodwill is!

Roster
 

Anybody else notice how bad the rosters are getting. Stby's are almost none existence, and over the last two months I have had two instances where I have been given a 9 day stretch with only 1 day off in the middle. Where is the chance to recover there? Oh, and working days off.

On another note, anybody know what this big announcement is they keep talking about on ART courses?

Big announcement;
Well dropping the frankfurts does lead in towards a big announcement! Why bother focussing on a world gateway that doesn't work. Paris and Amsterdam are just witin an hours flight reach.
Must have to do with major carrier tie-up. Cityjets airplanes are really old. AF-KLM close to a big deal for new busses.
Next week: Paris Airshow!
Last week: French build ATR72-600 certified by Easa!

Imminent 'big' announcement
 

Embraer slots have been sold to someone else and we're getting Q400NG's instead.

Forever doomed to be a tractor driver.........

They can both go out on strike together then Deano777:D

Question:

FlyBe buying Cimber Sterling?


Regards,

£9000/month basic, 5/3 5/3 roster, yes please.(ppjn)

Blue system
 

Have you heard the rumour where you are? Or are you guessing what might happen?

So management have done the rounds.
Balpa are going to do the rounds.

When are the IA ballot papers coming out??

Patience my young apprentice

Bill Ash is taking over as General Manager Flight Crew/Head of Crewing and Ops. Then we'd be rogered!

And changing our weekend to 8 hours, which can be reduced to 6 due to "operational disruption".

Thank you BOSD - it all makes sense now: Bill, or should I say Darth, Ash is in fact a dark lord of The Sith - this explains everything!

So this rumour about the jet options being sold then. Has anyone else heard it or is it just someone causing mischief? If its true then any long term path to an even half way fair salary has just evaporated (along with my hearing) :uhoh: