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BA to use pilots as cabin crew?
Paddle your own Kanoo, the cabin crew blog, is reporting that pilots and office-based staff are being asked to work as cabin crew for up to two and half months, to coverage the shortage of crew. Currently, it is only Cityflyer the BA franchise that is definitely known to have approached pilots British Airways offered redundancy to a large number of cabin crew redundant due to Covid. They have recently been recruiting but still face staff shortages while new crew are recruited and trained. I had certainly heard rumours that office staff were being asked but it had not generally gone down well.
The staff will receive cabin crew training but it will be interesting to see how cabin crew react to this. The last time that this happened was during the cabin crew strikes in 2010 when pilots and office-based staff replaced cabin crew that were on strike. This created a rift between cabin crew and pilots which took a long time to mend. Obviously this time the situation is slightly different. However, with the issues of random staff position allocations instead of putting more experienced cabin crew in the premium cabins, this will only exacerbate the situation.
BA denied the claim saying that it was for staff development
We are proud to have launched our British Airways colleague learning programme, Discovery, offering colleagues working in head office functions the opportunity to try their hand at an operational role on a temporary basis,” the spokesperson explained.
Discovery will bring together our various customer support schemes into one, underlining our continued focus on putting our customers at the heart of everything we do, allowing more of the team at British Airways to work directly with our customers and making our operation even more resilient.
There was some good news for the crew in that they have been offered up to a 15% pay rise. Newer cabin crew will receive a 5% pay rise in March and then two bonus payments worth 5%of their basic pay towards the end of the year. The longer serving crew will receive three bonus payments worth a total of 10% of their basic wage. However, there are still some parts of their pay in terms of allowances that were taken away due to Covid cost savings that appear to have become permanent.
Qatar Airways retro livery B777
It seems retro livery are all the rage at the moment with airlines. I really enjoyed seeing some of the older designs on BA prior to the pandemic. Qatar Airways has now joined the club with a flashback to its early days of operation with the delivery of a Boeing 777-300 aircraft painted in a retro livery design as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations.
The aircraft made its retro livery debut operating as Flight QR 0041 from Hamad International Airport (HIA), Doha, to Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, and will become a familiar sight on a variety of other Qatar Airways routes over the coming 12 months, celebrating 25 years of for the airline during its milestone year.
Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker, said: “We are tremendously excited to celebrate our 25th anniversary by introducing this unique aircraft to our fleet. We hope this retro design will bring many memories of travel to our passengers, especially those who experienced travelling with us in our early years. This livery marks the milestone of how far we have come as the national carrier, evolving into a six-time World’s Best Airline winner.
“As we look forward, this is a year of endless possibilities for the entire Qatar Airways Group family, with several important landmark events and celebrations planned across this period. Not least of which is the much-anticipated FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ where the eyes of the world will be turned in our direction.
“We will continue to shine and share our success with those who are at the heart of everything we do – our millions of loyal passengers around the globe.”
What do you think of the livery? Let us know in the comments below.
Cayman Islands gets rid of post-arrival testing
The Cayman Islands Government announced that effective from last Friday, February 18, fully vaccinated travellers are no longer required to complete on-island antigen testing on days 2, 5 and 7 after arrival. A negative antigen or PCR test conducted the day prior to arrival is still required for entry and applies to all travellers aged 5 and over.
In addition, the Government announced that fully vaccinated travellers are no longer required to take a COVID-19 test prior to travelling domestically between Grand Cayman to the sister islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman.
For more information, visit www.visitcaymanislands.com
Switzerland removes all entry restrictions for Covid
Switzerland has announced the removal of all Covid travel restrictions, due to the high level of immunity among the Swiss. The rules are now in effect and you will not have to provide proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative test or complete an entry form.
The country has also decided to stop issuing COVID certificates that are valid only in Switzerland, which were introduced last autumn for domestic use. However, individual Cantons (areas) will still be able to impose a certificate requirement
Domestic measures have also changed as you no longer need to wear a mask in order to enter shops, restaurants, cultural venues and other public settings and events.
You still need to isolate in case of a positive COVID-19 test and wear a mask in public transport, in hospitals and other healthcare institutions, until the end of March.
5 comments
There is an element of clickbait to this story. It actually relates to BA Cityflyer which is a franchise of BA. Still, it makes for a good story even with the inaccuracies.
Hopefully BA will see sense and get their experienced crews back into First and business before it’s too late. Just returned from Capetown in business and whilst the product offering could be improved, the delivery of it was nothing short of a shambles. One glass of wine, nothing else offered. No tea or coffee offered. Arrived into London and woke up with the announcements to say the seatbelt sign would be switched on shortly. Asked for a coffee and myself and partner were told it was too late. Really unprofessional by BA standards.
I saw on an article a week or so back that BA are requesting pilots and ground crew to step in as as cabin crew, Back then I thought maybe if their pay was not cut by up to 50% there would not be the need for this. I agree there is the issue of absence due to covid. But I know there is a large percentage that have left.
I work in HR and was at an online event on recruitment recently, someone from BA was there. They admitted they are unable to recruit cabin crew and admitted that they believed when they made so many redundant they would come flocking back once things eased and they would all be experienced crew members.
That simply hasn’t happened and they really can’t understand why. There were some very caustic comments from the group about why would people return to an organisation that had treated people so badly and would do again, why would anyone want a job that involved day by day international travel at the moment with the restrictions in place on crew when overseas and why oh why would people want to work for a basic level of pay that is less than that currently paid by Aldi and Lidl.
It wasn’t well received but recruitment at all levels is difficult at the moment and if BA want cabin crew, they really will have to up their game and make the role attractive again or take the consequences.
Thanks David that’s really interesting. One of the main issues was the huge paycut to the more senior cabin crew. I can’t see any of them going back to a company that reduced their pay by about 50%! It’s interesting that Virgin seem to have handled it much better by having a pool of staff waiting that wanted to come back. Plus of course they didn’t use Covid as an excuse to slash the pay of some of their most experienced staff.
Sadly BA now are reaping what they sow. I’ve heard of many junior crew struggling to have enough money to eat when down route and taking things like pot noodle to live on.
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