Mr. Prince

This seems a strange request considering how recently you seemed overjoyed at the prospect of taking mainline jobs in the form of the RJ fleet.

Snooky - we have to be careful we don't cut off our noses to spite our faces here. I'm sure this is merely step 1 in the grand BA plan to end FSS pensions for everyone, whichever branch of BA/BACX they represent. Its vital that all BA associated flight crew pull together to ensure that the unique nature of our career structure is recognised and access to NAPS remains available for us all. Scope is being thrashed out as in issue in itself.

Monty - not sure why fast jet equals no long haul, unless you don't have a full UK ATPL for some reason. The key problem with joining a long haul fleet as a DEP is that you will be at the bottom of the seniority list for the next 4 to 5 years, which means you will have virtually no control whatsoever over your life. Probably not a desirable situation for family types. Shorthaul does have a large element of stability, few roster changes, no real night flying and you'd probably make more cash and advance up the seniority list sooner. Only snag is that you're supposed to live within two hours of LHR and a DEP wage doesn't buy you very much in that radius. Right now I'm not looking to leave BA as I have the advantage of potentially long service on my side and I'm still in NAPS (though for how long I dont know). That said I think theres a lot to be said for Easyjet, including better salaries, shorter time to command, reasonably predictable roster (6 on, 3 off), the chance to make your money go further by working from an affordable base area, and the absence of orchestrated anti-flight crew attitudes within the company.

Monty 77

Please forgive my scepticism, but I'm afraid I just can't see why ANYBODY with a licence would want to join BA these days.

Many other airlines offer at least as much security, and pension, few pay less, none have a greater time to command, and absolutely none can have a more anti-flight deck attitude than the "World's Favourite".

Do yourself and your family a favour, and look elsewhere.

Monty77 - I have to agree with HandSolo and Tandemrotor. The deal at BA is poor and the time to command is going to be very long for new joiners. Get a job with Easy and see how much you like short haul. You can always apply to BA in the future but I would say that once you're over 35 its not worth it, as it would take you 10 years to start getting a decent roster (on the 744).
Hopefully, the pay/pensions package at BA will improve one day!

In the meantime, good luck and happy flying.

Food for thought - thanks all.

Back to the original topic...

It looks like SOME industry's unions have the balls to stand up for future generations:

Strikes threat over 'pensions robbery' - BBC

It was nice to see in the Sunday papers that Lord Marshall is still in the Final Salary Pension Scheme. No doubt his final salary will be enhanced to ensure that he gets as much out of it as possible when he does retire.

It would be interesting to see his Annual Statement; the one that shows how much you have put in over the years and how much you expect to get - now has anybody got a copy by chance?;)

Wouldn't it be really honourable if all the Directors of BA withdrew from the FS scheme forthwith and joined the money purchase scheme that they are setting up for their new employees.

'NAPS' or 'money purchase', which is safer?
 

Viewing the FSS versus a money purchase scheme, there is possibly another angle to consider.

NAPS is very badly under funded at the moment. If that situation continues, and for any number of reasons BA go bust, those currently contributing will face a very poor future and may indeed lose nearly all of their contributions. (Pension legislation requires that those in receipt of a pension take precedence over those who have yet to receive one.) Any 'new entrants' contributions will remain 'safe' of course because they belong to those individuals little 'pot'.

I am sure many will say, "BA won't go bust, surely not." Well I hope they never do but no one imagined that EASTERN, BRANNIFF, PAN AM, TWA, SWISSAIR, SABENA, etc would either.

The fact that BA has decided to end FSS smacks of desperation and will only cause moral amongst the troops to further diminish. And if the troops are not pulling together then the chances of complete business failure are that much greater. Of course I wouldn't expect the management team to have thought that far ahead, they are only considering the future funding requirements of an under funded scheme.

They really do seem to have lost sight of the fact that any airlines greatest asset is its staff, if you fail to look after that asset then the future will be bleak. Perhaps they don't teach that these days at Harvard business school.

If you are contributor to NAPS then it really is a question of 'how lucky do you feel'? With the current management team (whom seem to be the on the receiving end of many unpleasant articles in the financial press at the moment) I would be keeping both my fingers and my toes crossed when I go to bed at night.:eek:


Regards
Exeng