Section:GDN 1N PaGe:45 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 18:02 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Saturday 7 September 2019 The Guardian •45Saturday 7 September 2019 The Guardian •45
▼ A two-day strike by pilots starting
on Monday will see most of British
Airways’s 800 fl ights a day cancelled
PHOTOGRAPH: CHRIS RATCLIFFE/ GETTY IMAGESBA pilots’ strike
Captains demand
payback for fl ying
airline into profi t
Gwyn Topham
Transport correspondentW
hat has gone
so wrong that
British Airways
pilots earning
six-fi gure
salaries are
angry enough to strike? On Monday
and Tuesday, the majority of BA’s
4,300 pilots based at Heathrow and
Gatwick will down tools for the fi rst
pilot strike in the airline’s history.
BA would usually operate almost
800 fl ights a day , carrying 145,000
passengers, most of which will now
have been cancelled or rebooked.
In the midst of Britain’s political
turmoil , it seems fi tting that the fl ag
carrier should also be lumbering into
crisis. In cost and cancellations, the
strike will probably eclipse even the
bitter BA cabin crew dispute of 2010-- An eight-month pay negotiation
has broken down, despite an off er
worth 11.9% over three years having
been made.
Pilots represented by the Balpa
union have rejected this and have
asked for the kind of profi t share
enjoyed by directors, plus an above-
infl ation pay guarantee.
Few people would be dissatisfi ed
with a BA pilot’s pay. Perhaps only
Álex Cruz , the company’s chief
executive, who is currently paid
£1.3m , would be pained to earn a
captain’s £167 ,000 plus allowances.
Cruz believes the pay deal on off er
is good enough. When strike s were
announced, he said blame lay
“squarely at the door” of Balpa.
Cruz added: “I personally believe
BA pilots are the best in the world ...
but I think they have been very badly
served by the union .”
But 93% of pilots voted for
industrial action on a 90% turnout.
Brian Strutton, the general secretary
of Balpa, said: “BA does pay well and
has good terms and conditions.
“And yet almost all of its pilots
wanted to go on strike. You’ve got to
look at what the company is doing
to generate that level of ill-feeling
among their staff .”
One striking pilot, a long-serving
BA employee at Heathrow, sa id: “It’s
the pilots pushing the union rather
than the other way round.
“Pilots are logical thinkers, they
are not going to be led by the nose,
no union leader is going to whip
them up. Only management has the
ability to do that. Communications
from Álex Cruz have made pilots
more angry, not less.”
Speaking on condition of
anonymity, he said: “It’s not really
about money, it’s about respect.
We’ve eff ectively been lied to. We’ve
given up a serious pension scheme,
pay and pay rises when the company
was weak – all on the promise that
when the company was strongand giving up proper returns to its
investors, we would benefi t.”
BA, which has been approached
for comment, said this week that it
ha d “acted with integrity through
many months of negotiations” and
accused Balpa of backtracking on an
agreement.
In terms of pure profi t, BA’s lean
years are in the past. Its generous but
burdensome pension scheme has
been closed, saving it an estimated
£800m, according to Balpa. The
airline is the cash cow of IAG,
making more than £2bn in pre-tax
profi t in 2018. “And now that we’ve
asked for a little bit of payback, it’s
not there,” the pilot added.
Day-to-day gripes associated with
cost cutting have furthered pilots’
disenchantment, he said , including
slow responses to minor engineering
issues – “not a safety risk,” said the
pilot “but you wouldn’t expect it at
an airline like BA” – to worsening
food and accommodation for long-
haul fl ight stopovers.
Complaints have headed into a
void, the pilot said: “The stress is
such that the pilots are trying to say- you’ve not been listening to us.”
BA has said the pay deal would
take some captains to more than
£200 ,000 a year after three years.
The pilot admitted he was well paid,
but said other colleagues struggled :
“Many pilots are working fl at out,
they are not likely to get a decent
pension, it’s a much longer pay scale
to progress to higher pay.”
According to Balpa, a cadet pilot
comes in at about £27,000 and a fi rst
offi cer £59,000, while captains start
at £78,000, making about £100,000 a
more typical basic wage.
While the row is pinned to
pay, Strutton said : “There are alot of factors. BA pilots have lost
confi dence in the management
and direction of the airline. A
cost-cutting regime has reduced
the quality of the service. The
cumulative eff ect is a serious
groundswell of bad feeling.”
Meltdowns at BA , in particular IT
outages, have fuelled that feeling.
The power cut that left 75,000
passengers stranded in May 2017
also disrupted pilots and crew.
“Management decisions are being
taken that impinge on the working
lives and quality of service that
pilots and BA staff can deliver. They
feel that quality should be the ethos
of BA, and they don’t think that it is ,”
Strutton said.
More strikes could follow.
A further walkout is due on 27
September, although BA has yet to
cancel those fl ights, and Balpa has a
mandate for action until January.
On Thursday, BA furiously
rebuff ed an off er of new talks and
accused Strutton of reneging on an
agreement struck during talks in
August, which he denied.
Strutton said he was “running out
of ideas to try to avoid the strike”.
“We need to start rebuilding the
relationship of trust and confi dence,
which is so sadly lacking ,” he said.▲ The BA pilots’ strike is likely to eclipse disruption caused by 2010-11’s bitter
industrial action by BA cabin crews, above PHOTOGRAPH: LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES▲ BA pilots, who can earn £167,000,
say their dispute is about ‘respect’‘We’ve eff ectively
been lied to. We’ve
given up a serious
pension scheme and
pay rises when the
company was weak’Striking BA pilot
Speaking anonymouslyFinancial
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