... and BA is braced for legal battle on axe for 1 in 4 pilots
BRITISH AIRWAYS is heading for a legal battle with union officials over plans to make a quarter of its pilots redundant.
Balpa, which represents BA’s 4,300 pilots, is understood to have asked lawyers to begin the legal process to apply for redress on behalf of the 1,100 pilots who are at risk of being let go.
The airline’s parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG), last week announced plans to cut up to 12,000 jobs at BA, including one in four pilots, as it scaled back its operations.
However, Balpa argues that BA is in breach of its Covid-19 agreement, made on March 24, under which the airline committed to ensuring its pilots benefit from the
Government furlough scheme to avoid compulsory redundancies. BA pilots earn about £100,000 a year on average, rising to £200,000 for a senior captain, and have typically worked for the airline for 15 years. BA aims to offer only statutory redundancy, claiming voluntary packages on enhanced terms would be too expensive.
In a letter to BA’s director of flight operations, Allister Bridger, Balpa said: ‘Instead of seeking to work constructively with Balpa to address the legitimate problems we face as a result of Covid-19, BA seems determined to try to exploit the current crisis at the expense of loyal employees.’
BA’s brutal restructuring to survive the pandemic has also rattled major shareholders in IAG, which also owns Spain’s national carrier Iberia, low-cost airlines Vueling and Level, and Irish national carrier Aer Lingus. A source said that two of IAG’s biggest institutional shareholders are concerned about t he i mpact of t he BA restructuring on IAG’s revenues, as BA contributes around 60 per cent of the group’s profits. IAG’s biggest shareholder is Qatar Airways, which increased its stake to 25.1 per cent in February, with Invesco and Aberdeen Standard Investments also in the top ten.
Last week, Labour MP Seema Malhotra wrote to BA chief executive Alex Cruz asking him to do ‘everything possible’ to avoid job losses. ‘The scale of the cuts will have a detrimental impact on local jobs and the wider economy,’ she said.