Here here Bex 88. Calmer heads need to prevail over the next 6 months.

This is just a completely unprecedented situation which is quite clearly going to require some sacrifice from everyone if no one is to lose their job.

The press conference today with the CSO and CMO suggests we are 10-14 weeks away from the "peak" of the epidemic in the UK. But it WILL be back next winter. Companies are going to have to take action which preserves their survival through till 2021 when a vaccine is available. Personally I suspect government intervention will sooner or later be necessary, but we're obviously not there yet.

Anyone who underestimates the challenges we face over the coming months is only deluding themselves. We have to stick together and try to share whatever pain is coming our way.

Well, coincidently, a number of pilots will be without a job following their soon-to-be employer deciding to withdraw their job offer...

Worchester
 

Why do I pick NEXT February?
Well, considering they just closed Norway as I was out fishing today, I would say the hysteria has just begun!
( 600 cases and 1 dead ! )
Anyway
I could be wrong, but no airline , in Europe needs a single extra pilot the next 13 months!!
Easter starts 1 April 2021 and then summer starts with a lot of pent up " travel energy" amongst the survivors. Airlines and folks alike.
As an old Head of Training I happen to know a thing or two about recruitment and providing the Max is back and the Corona is backing off, there is no point in committing to new pilots until well after newyear.
I hope I am wrong, and feel free to remind me if I am,

Stay healthy!
Cpt B

Sounds like Blu has caught the supposed hysteria from Norway! Picking random numbers and dates out of the air does not a sensible analysis make.

Considering there has not been a virus like this for a generation, there is no relevant comparison. Watching interviews with actual professional analysts, they say there is a pick up in holiday bookings for this winter (ie delaying their summer holidays), so I suspect we will see a quick economic pick up in the second half of this year.

I’m going to stick to the professional advice from scientists and economists rather than guess work based on pure speculation.

bex88
Voluntary ‘redundancy’, (I presume that’s what you mean?) comes at a cost to the employer. As those volunteers may not come from the fleets the employer would prefer to shed pilots.

How much of your own T&Cs are you prepared to sacrifice for redundancies to be VR rather than CR? (If your union are even in a position to influence your employer??

I see you are rather senior, and don’t feel under any threat? You have been ‘saved’ more than once by your colleagues. That’s great. You’re well placed to take one for the team.

4468. 100% I am willing to take a part time working option or job share for a fixed term.

I feel under threat. I have seniority within the company and on fleet but not in P1 status.

I can pay my bills with less money. It will not be fun but I will do that so colleagues do not loose everything.

Yes VR costs money but it is something which has been offered in the past. Surly it needs to be a option made available should anyone wish to accept it. Regardless of seniority, now is the time to come together and share the burden.

Alex Cruz’s video message does not sound good at all.

Agreed. I have to say I am feeling pretty vulnerable on the 747, but I resigned myself to it months ago. The minute I heard this was infectious with few or no symptoms, I knew it was already out of China and it was going to be serious on a global scale. People were saying it is just the flu, but I knew it was not. A new virus is always more of a problem than an old one such as the flu, because of the lack of resistance within the population. I suspect the rumours from months ago, of twenty jumbos being offloaded early, is bang on the money.

more likely unpaid leaves, but yes, it's coming. brace for impact

An inevitable outcome , Yes BA makes large amounts of money BUT that’s lots of staff and lots of empty aircraft .
I often think if we didn’t have media we would all be sailing along with out a care , it’s so blown out of proportion!!

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....656e7f2e7.jpeg

I’m afraid that attitude is a big part of the problem. It isn’t blown out of proportion, at all.

Google the Spanish flu of 1918, if it’s anything like that then BILLIONS may be infected. The whole ‘meh, more people die of the flu’ is what will kill people because if that’s what you believe then you’re not going to be doing your hit by self isolating, washing hands constantly and being cautious. Society has to beat this collectively, any chinks in the collective and the whole defence is worthless.

I'm not sure about that. I'm a 'meh, more people die of the flu' type (because it's TRUE) but at the same time the majority of people are not going to let their guard down with Covid-19 especially considering the hourly barrage of news updates and statistics.

It would be so wonderful if it turns out that more people end up dying of flu than of Cov19, however without the so called madness going on across the world right now, there is absolutely no way that statement would hold true. Sadly, even with the current action, flu related death figures are highly likely to be dwarfed by the Cov19 related death figures over at least the next two year period. After that, the world will hopefully have developed similar levels of immunity to Cov19 as it has to flu, and the figures may well come a bit closer together. Anyone who thinks all of the economic carnage of the last month or so is simply due to some overblown media coverage of a harmless disease, really needs to pull their head out of the sand.

The language being used in the media is a huge issue. If I hear “LOCKDOWN” one more time!

Most of our home delivery from Sainsburys was marked out of stock so didn’t arrive yesterday. Popped to my local supermarket to buy the missing bits to find scenes akin to an end of the world zombie movie! Absolutely ridiculous.

This is serious for those that are vulnerable ie the elderly and/or those with serious underlying health conditions, but I’m far more concerned about the economic crisis developing. This will be catastrophic for our industry and others. Thousands of people will be made jobless shortly but meanwhile many more people will probably die from normal influenza and falling down their stairs at home. Let alone the roads! I’m not insensitive to those that will be affected by this, which includes members of my own family. But the world needs to stop and have a real think about the ramifications of alarmist coverage.

Harsh as it may sound, the world will keep on spinning once this temporary crisis is overcome and if millions are unemployed the social problems that follow will make the Corona virus outbreak look very insignificant.

And as for daft comparisons to the 1918 Spanish flu.....come off it. The world has moved on significantly since the oxygen and aspirin used a century ago!

23/03/2020
 

Evening all.

Is anybody else here due to start on the 23rd? I haven’t heard a thing from BA yet, growing increasingly worried...

Thanks

Surely you’ve seen the news and therefore unfortunately have your answer? I wouldn’t be expecting to start any time soon. Good luck.

The problem with this view is that it crumbles under the slightest questioning.

I highly doubt that after the first week of the the second world war people were sticking their heads in the sand and laughing it off on the basis that by that point no one had actually been killed yet and therefore bee stings, shark attacks and accidents involving ice cream dispensers had still killed more people, and therefore we’re a bigger threat to life?

More people die of flu than in car crashes in the U.K., I suspect you still wear a seatbelt... And more people die of old age than cancer, I still think it’s worthwhile researching cancer treatments though!

Flu is not COVID, they are totally totally different and one has zero effect on the other one. Apathy is more dangerous than the virus itself.

Not a daft comparison at all. Swine flu, 10 years ago, infected over a billion people. Only reason there wasn’t 50 million dead as with the Spanish flu was luck as it wasn’t a serious disease. You may think that people in the 1900s lived in caves and still worshipped trees but sadly not. They had exactly the same number of ways to cure Spanish flu as we have for COVID. Zero, nada, zilch. Tell me again that it’s a daft comparison.

I'm obviosuly not in any positon to clarify, but the most recent comms I've read suggest that all March start dates are going ahead. Good luck - we'll all need it!

Check your PMs