EXCLUSIVE: British Airways could close Gatwick short-haul after BALPA pulls pilot ballot

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• Nick says:

  18 Sep18 September 08:44

  When BA started Mixed Fleet, the legacy crew (and union) couldn’t do anything about it, because T&C for existing crew weren’t affected. There’s nothing stopping BA doing exactly the same for pilots. They wanted BALPA on board because it would be quicker and smoother, but they can still go ahead without – and any strike would be legally invalid as long as legacy T&C don’t change. BALPA have shots themselves in the foot by pushing themselves away from ‘Newco’. There are plenty of pilots wanting jobs.

  • Memesweeper says:

    18 Sep18 September 09:21

    Correct.

    BALPA seem to think BA can’t hire the pilots they need to in time keep the slots without BALPAs cooperation. I suspect they might be right.

    • Tim says:

      18 Sep18 September 09:51

      BALPA haven’t shot themselves in the foot. BA cannot hire pilots unless they’re represented by BALPA and on the main seniority list. Not having an agreement with BALPA means an operation without BA pilots. Their clear fire and rehire fails and they’re unable to drive a massive wedge between two groups of pilots and later degrade terms for all.

      It is a carbon copy of mixed fleet, but it’s failed.

      • Lady London says:

        18 Sep18 September 10:18

        Perfectly stated Tim.

        BA will of course blame the pilots and say they’re unreasonable.

        Pilots must insist BA puts everything they’ve promised im writing.

      • Nofanof BA says:

        18 Sep18 September 19:42

        It’s a newco. They can employ who ever they want. BA mainline can prostrate all they want but if the Newco want to hire pilots what’s to stop them?

        • Lady London says:

          18 Sep18 September 19:56

          Then they were going to do that anyway.

          Better that than drive a wedge between Heathrow pilots and those who’ve been forced to move to Gatwick, then have BA circle back and use that as the thin end of the wedge to demolish Heathrow pilots’ packages.

          On a secondment they have a right to keep package and Heathrow base so right to return to Heathrow as and when conditions create openings.

          On a transfer they have TUPE rights.

          There are ways around this but if BA does it, they were going to do it anyway.

          If BA is refusing to put in writing what has been agreed this is a very red loud warning signal I have never seen an employer subsequently keep to an agreement if they refused to put part of what was agreed into writing.

          Allowing BA to get away with this would make Gatwick the new Mid Fleet.

    • Dev says:

      18 Sep18 September 09:51

      Wrong! BA can get a whole load of crew in easily from the likes of Ryanair. Pay is surprisingly very competitive at RyanAir but working conditions are a slog!

      • Memesweeper says:

        18 Sep18 September 10:28

        Wrong aircraft type. EasyJet pilots have the correct training, but unlike the RyanAir ones, they aren’t all looking for a new employer.

        • ChasP says:

          18 Sep18 September 13:43

          I’m sure they could be tempted T&Cs could still be better at NewCo

          Meanwhile any BALPA action would give BA a reason to cut back on “Holding Pool” etc and cut their costs

        • ChrisC says:

          18 Sep18 September 15:16

          They may have the aircraft type training but one issue BA have had in the past is being able to induct new recruits on BA policies and procedures before they are let lose on actual passenger flights because they had and have a lack of pilots qualified (and willing) to act as trainers and assessors for new staff.

          Couple of years ago a pilot friend of mine had an offer to join BA but went to another airline because it would have taken months for him to get on the induction programme.

    • Nick says:

      18 Sep18 September 09:54

      … so BA uses existing pilots for a while, then sets up Newco a bit later than planned. Not as if there’s 100% flying at heathrow anyway. They’ll just use their current AOC for now if they have to.

      Although even the latter isn’t a certainty, as all BA pilots can contractually be moved to any IAG OpCo as long as they operate to current T&C. So the cards are in BA’s favour really.

      I personally think this is BALPA yet again screwing over the bottom of the pack to protect the oldies at whatever cost.

  • L. says:

    18 Sep18 September 14:49

    The difference is that anyone can be cabin crew, but not anyone can pilot the aircraft. The sad reality is that cabin crew is disposable, but flight crew is not. I am cabin crew and I know exactly what I’m talking about. In the UK one doesn’t need any prior qualifications to be cabin crew, in fact many airlines prefer to have people who never worked in this before, so they don’t bring old habits. So they can fire and rehire cabin crew as they wish, because there will be hundreds of others in line for the job.
    With pilots, the situation is entirely different. One needs a license, typewriting, hours of experience… So BA needs the pilots from BALPA, they don’t have the option to go with someone else willing to dot he job.
    It’s one of the reasons cabin crew and pilots receive completely different treatments. Whether this is right/wrong or fair/unfair is another story.

    • Mike says:

      18 Sep18 September 17:04

      L – thank you for your service. I may have had a drink from you in the past – if not I hope to do in the future- I always say “please and thank you”

    • Dev says:

      19 Sep19 September 06:46

      I would slightly disagree … thanks to all the mass marketing and slick PR from flying schools (every year, they claim that the world needs 80,000 pilots blah blah blah!), there is starting to be an abundance of pilots in Europe and the slippery slope to them being disposable has begun.

      • Dev says:

        19 Sep19 September 06:47

        Of course, needing £100k helps but just look at all those TV documentaries showing 18/19 year olds going through pilot training after parents mortgaged their houses, etc.

• Catalan says:

  18 Sep18 September 08:50

  BALPA are playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship with BA here.
  I’m guessing too that there is little sympathy for flight crew from their cabin crew and ground staff colleagues who made financial sacrifices whilst BALPA negotiated separate ‘sweet deals’ with BA management. (Including a lucrative pensions package).
  Pilots’ unions have always been the strongest of unions in aviation. A little less so now during the Covid pandemic.

  • Mint and Tea Tree says:

    18 Sep18 September 10:51

    Meanwhile everyone else is wondering what this mystical sweet deal agreed with British Airways actually is.

• Stuart says:

  18 Sep18 September 09:08

  What happens next no-one knows, but BA want an airline at LGW, and BALPA wants it for pilots too, and was ready to make large concessions, but those concessions needed to be legally supported.

• George K says:

  18 Sep18 September 09:37

  A union’s job is to support and protect its members. If it’s as clear-cut as BA failing to put pen to paper on a verbal agreement, then I can’t fault BALPA’s approach.

  • Doug M says:

    18 Sep18 September 09:46

    That is main point here, if BA failed to agree to a written clause of something verbally promised then BALPA know what they’re dealing with.

    • Nick says:

      18 Sep18 September 10:00

      We don’t know that’s definitely what happened – we haven’t heard BA’s side. It could equally be that the union wanted to back-track and found a way. After all, they explicitly said in the ballot that everything was agreed and ‘all the Is dotted’ etc., so something changed for them.

      • George K says:

        18 Sep18 September 10:32

        Agreed – and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from BA soon enough. But this is the same airline which has, among other things, normalised illegally refusing compensation/duty of care payments with barefaced lies, only reneging when challenged in court. My point is: we know how they choose to treat customers, and through recent history, we know how they choose to treat their staff too.

        • Richie says:

          18 Sep18 September 12:31

          Viz reg 261 behaviour, businesses will always behave badly when the opportunity is there to save money, the legislation just needs to be more watertight and if the legislators don’t tweak legislation to make it more watertight they needn’t act surprised when voters don’t turnout at elections. In contract negotiations always keep an excellent record of what’s been said, it’s saved me buckets of grief and time.

  • Nofanof BA says:

    18 Sep18 September 19:47

    What I cannot understand is why BALPA would go to ballot before/without finalising a deal. It’s nonsense!

    • Rob says:

      18 Sep18 September 21:18

      Not really. If you have agreed the key points, it makes sense to do the ballot alongside the legal work to finalise it.

• Lady London says:

  18 Sep18 September 10:04

  BA might like the opportunity to reneg on the Gatwick entity and blame the pilots.

  I think the pilots are right to insist that BA puts any promise in writing. Let’s face it BA has done everything it can to wriggle out of agreements or destroy them as soon as they got the opportunity.

  • Memesweeper says:

    18 Sep18 September 10:35

    I think IAG are desperate to get something started in Gatwick. Not because BA needs the feed, or because it was very profitable before, but to stop JetBlue/WestJet/Norwegian MkII setting up and expanding into an airport on the doorstep of fortress Heathrow with plenty of slots to sell and a second runway coming. I don’t think they care too much about a continued expansion of EasyJet.

    If they can’t get back up and running in their own right quickly I think IAG will be paying another airline (eg CityFlyer, Eastern) to slot-sit for them.

    • Doug M says:

      18 Sep18 September 11:31

      Second runway is a bit of stretch, even in plans it’s quite restricted I believe. JetBlue and WestJet not Euro shorthaul and who knows what Norwegian Mk II will be or if it will be.

• Mike says:

  18 Sep18 September 10:58

  I thought unions were to support the potentially down trodden masses not supposedly well educated pilots – although the supposedly well educated pilots seem to have a massive chip on their shoulder – if you don’t like your job / conditions get a new job

  • Doug M says:

    18 Sep18 September 11:32

    Maybe the well educated are smart enough to see the value of a Union, unlike say, well some posters here.

    • Lady London says:

      18 Sep18 September 12:02

      +1 I got into trouble at a major company for openly saying, as a member of management, that the employees including managememt needed a union to stem the abuses (and they were not many, but they were creeping up) of our multinational owners.

      Major players in that industry, which was a new industry, had done everything they could to keep unions out and had succeeded. Whilst it’s illegal for companies to block unions my commenting we needed one was looked upon with consternation by my savvier colleagues.

  • Memesweeper says:

    18 Sep18 September 12:29

    If you don’t own the company you work for you probably want to join a union. How much you earn is really immaterial, and often the better paid workers have more leverage. I’ve always been in union if there was one available, even when i was a manager.

    • Luke says:

      18 Sep18 September 14:53

      is the correct answer!

  • Ken says:

    18 Sep18 September 16:21

    You seem utterly clueless about unions & the whole trade union movement history , but this is common for those blowhards crying “get another job”.

• Derek Scott says:

  18 Sep18 September 11:55

  It is clear the TU’s still have not learnt the lessons of the past.
  BA can never compete head on with other low cost airlines whilst tied to unrealistic pressures and demands.
  Such a shame for all those crews and support staff that had a chance of good employment.

• Colin MacKinnon says:

  18 Sep18 September 12:42

  Latest issue of Flight Training News is just in (and this is normally very optimistic about the industry since training schools are its advertisers!). Sources: IATA

  European traffic by market segments, 01 Sept 2021 compared to 2019:

  Low cost: down 30%
  Traditional: down 41%
  Business aviation: up 28%
  Non-scheduled carrier: down 9%
  Cargo: up 7%

  Or Revenue per Passenger Kilometres:

  Global: down 53.1% compared to July 2019. However, in month-on-month terms RPKs picked up by 8%, the fastest growth since Nov 2020

  But: as a % of pre-crisis revenues, industry wide RPKs figures are interesting:

  For international, they are at around 20% of pre-crisis levels.

  For domestic: they got to almost 80% in July, but seemed to have dropped to around 60% in August (source: IATA Economics using IATA Monthly Statistics and DDS ticketing data)

  So, BA low cost at Gatwick? Maybe it just isn’t worthwhile for BA?
  As a pilot, I wouldn’t be worried about my pay, I’d be worried about my job!

  And in other news in FTN, Ryanair has reportedly told pilots at East Midlands Airport to expect a 70% reduction in take-home pay this winter (despite saying publicly the airline is expecting to reach pre-covid capacity in October!)

  Or according to UK Govt figures, 51% of people employed in Air Passenger Transport are still on furlough.

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