BA - what are "mixed fleet" crews and why are they on strike?

mozart · Wed Jun 28, 2017 6:34 am

I understand that this year has seen a number of strikes already from so-called mixed fleet crews at British Airways.

What are those mixed fleet crews? What is different about them from other crews? And why are they on strike?

Dogbreath · Wed Jun 28, 2017 6:50 am

Check out the post about 2 or 3 pages along titled, "BA applies to use Qatari aircraft to cover strike". Might answer some of your questions.

anstar · Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:10 am

BA Mixed fleet crews were formed around 4 years ago to lower BA's crewing costs. Mixed refers to the fact the fly both long and short haul to maximise flying hours. BA also have legacy fleets such as euro (short haul) and world wide (long haul).

Mixed fleet crews are currently on strike to improve pay and rostering conditions. Currently the mixed fleet crews will get around 1k GBP ($1250 USD) per month after tax as a salary which in London is not a liveable wage.

Ryga · Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:11 am

mozart wrote:
I understand that this year has seen a number of strikes already from so-called mixed fleet crews at British Airways.

What are those mixed fleet crews? What is different about them from other crews? And why are they on strike?

BA Mixed Fleet are the crew that operate the core fleet at London Heathrow, and various routes etc.. At Heathrow there are various types of contracts, the contract being offered for the past decade or so is the Mixed Fleet contract.
Other contracts at Heathrow include the Worldwide Fleet (which tends to be all of the old horses at Heathrow, you can't get hold of this contract anymore), and there is a Euro fleet. London Gatwick also has their own contract, Gatwick fleet/Beach Fleet whatever you wish to call it.

So it's important to know that it is only the London Heathrow Mixed Fleet that have been, and will be on strike. The reason for the strike, is due to pay disputes. BA crew believe that they were promised a certain wage in their contracts, and have not been getting this wage.
Personally I do not agree with the strike, I looked at joining British Airways as Crew many years ago, and saw how shocking the wage was from the contract. It is my opinion that the crew knew what they was getting themselves into, they get many benefits such as concessions, and long trips which I'm sure more than makes up for this and the airline spends a great deal of money on this. If they believe they're not getting paid enough, there are a few very well paying airlines within the UK, two of them are charter and one of them you go to Barcelona 8 times a day - only they can make the choice.

JannEejit · Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:30 am

Ryga wrote:
Personally I do not agree with the strike, I looked at joining British Airways as Crew many years ago, and saw how shocking the wage was from the contract. It is my opinion that the crew knew what they was getting themselves into, they get many benefits such as concessions.

Do they get concessions on their rent, morrgages, gas and electricity bills, or cheap petrol for their cars, which incidentally some of them have been found sleeping in at Heathrow inbetween shifts because they can't afford to live a sensible distance from base.

No doubt it's all the customer's fault though for "demanding" cheap tickets and refusing to pay extra to be seated next to their loved ones...

atcsundevil · Wed Jun 28, 2017 11:06 am

Just for the sake of not having two simultaneous discussions on the strike, please keep it to discussing the differences in work groups. Discussion on how it relates to the strike is fine, but please limit it to that.

✈️ atcsundevil

Baexecutive · Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:21 pm

Mixed Fleet was set up almost 7 years ago as a result of concessions not being reached by crew on the older fleets. A decision was made to introduce a lower cost effective/flexible fleet into the airline which would fly both long and short haul out of LHR.

Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.

Whether you agree or disagree with the strike is irrelevant as these people clearly are demonstrating their right to stand up for what they believe is right and I take my hat off to them.

Andy33 · Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:27 pm

Ryga wrote:
mozart wrote:
I understand that this year has seen a number of strikes already from so-called mixed fleet crews at British Airways.

What are those mixed fleet crews? What is different about them from other crews? And why are they on strike?

BA Mixed Fleet are the crew that operate the core fleet at London Heathrow, and various routes etc.. At Heathrow there are various types of contracts, the contract being offered for the past decade or so is the Mixed Fleet contract.
Other contracts at Heathrow include the Worldwide Fleet (which tends to be all of the old horses at Heathrow, you can't get hold of this contract anymore), and there is a Euro fleet. London Gatwick also has their own contract, Gatwick fleet/Beach Fleet whatever you wish to call it.

So it's important to know that it is only the London Heathrow Mixed Fleet that have been, and will be on strike. The reason for the strike, is due to pay disputes. BA crew believe that they were promised a certain wage in their contracts, and have not been getting this wage.

Well nearly right. Prior to 2011, BA cabin crew/flight attendants based at LHR were either WorldWide, operating widebodies on longhaul flights, or EuroFleet, operating narrowbodies plus a handful of 763s on shorthaul. Both these crew groups still exist. BA believed that separating crew this way made it hard to produce efficient crew schedules, and created Mixed Fleet. Mixed Fleet crew members (all the new hires since 2011) operate a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul rotations, and are qualified and current on A320 series plus two widebody aircraft families (UK aviation regs only allow currency on 3 families at the same time). The one exception to the 2011 rule is that staff who came from British Midland when it was merged into BA were added to EuroFleet.
I really wouldn't call EuroFleet and WorldWide crew "old horses", at least anywhere near LHR while anyone in BA uniform is listening, since between them they still form 60% of LHR based crew members so the chances are you'll be overheard by one of them.
Because Mixed Fleet has only been around for 6 years (not 10), not everyone in EF or WW is even early middle-aged, let alone old.
Gatwick crew base has its own fleet structure and union agreement, they only have A320 series and 772ERs based there. Gatwick also crews the A318 on LCY-JFK.
Then there's the crews who operate the Embraers for subsidiary BA Cityflyer which has its own AOC, the 757/767 Paris based crews of subsidiary BA OpenSkies, again with its own AOC, and crews at the various International crew bases round the world, supplying language qualified crews to flights operated by both MixedFleet and WorldWide. None are involved in the strike either.

This strike is different to the previous ones, which were about pay. The pay dispute has been settled, but BA withdrew the staff travel concession from Mixed Fleet crew who went on strike over pay. The July strike is to get the staff travel back.

Ryga · Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:49 pm

JannEejit wrote:
Ryga wrote:
Personally I do not agree with the strike, I looked at joining British Airways as Crew many years ago, and saw how shocking the wage was from the contract. It is my opinion that the crew knew what they was getting themselves into, they get many benefits such as concessions.

Do they get concessions on their rent, morrgages, gas and electricity bills, or cheap petrol for their cars, which incidentally some of them have been found sleeping in at Heathrow inbetween shifts because they can't afford to live a sensible distance from base.

No doubt it's all the customer's fault though for "demanding" cheap tickets and refusing to pay extra to be seated next to their loved ones...

Once again, they knew what they was getting themselves into. They knew the contracts, and the contracts haven't changed since they started... (I know, I went to apply for it. Glad I didn't ) Like I said, there's plenty of better paying airlines to chose from.

Ryga · Wed Jun 28, 2017 12:50 pm

Andy33 wrote:
Ryga wrote:
mozart wrote:
I understand that this year has seen a number of strikes already from so-called mixed fleet crews at British Airways.

What are those mixed fleet crews? What is different about them from other crews? And why are they on strike?

BA Mixed Fleet are the crew that operate the core fleet at London Heathrow, and various routes etc.. At Heathrow there are various types of contracts, the contract being offered for the past decade or so is the Mixed Fleet contract.
Other contracts at Heathrow include the Worldwide Fleet (which tends to be all of the old horses at Heathrow, you can't get hold of this contract anymore), and there is a Euro fleet. London Gatwick also has their own contract, Gatwick fleet/Beach Fleet whatever you wish to call it.

So it's important to know that it is only the London Heathrow Mixed Fleet that have been, and will be on strike. The reason for the strike, is due to pay disputes. BA crew believe that they were promised a certain wage in their contracts, and have not been getting this wage.

Well nearly right. Prior to 2011, BA cabin crew/flight attendants based at LHR were either WorldWide, operating widebodies on longhaul flights, or EuroFleet, operating narrowbodies plus a handful of 763s on shorthaul. Both these crew groups still exist. BA believed that separating crew this way made it hard to produce efficient crew schedules, and created Mixed Fleet. Mixed Fleet crew members (all the new hires since 2011) operate a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul rotations, and are qualified and current on A320 series plus two widebody aircraft families (UK aviation regs only allow currency on 3 families at the same time). The one exception to the 2011 rule is that staff who came from British Midland when it was merged into BA were added to EuroFleet.
I really wouldn't call EuroFleet and WorldWide crew "old horses", at least anywhere near LHR while anyone in BA uniform is listening, since between them they still form 60% of LHR based crew members so the chances are you'll be overheard by one of them.
Because Mixed Fleet has only been around for 6 years (not 10), not everyone in EF or WW is even early middle-aged, let alone old.
Gatwick crew base has its own fleet structure and union agreement, they only have A320 series and 772ERs based there. Gatwick also crews the A318 on LCY-JFK.
Then there's the crews who operate the Embraers for subsidiary BA Cityflyer which has its own AOC, the 757/767 Paris based crews of subsidiary BA OpenSkies, again with its own AOC, and crews at the various International crew bases round the world, supplying language qualified crews to flights operated by both MixedFleet and WorldWide. None are involved in the strike either.

This strike is different to the previous ones, which were about pay. The pay dispute has been settled, but BA withdrew the staff travel concession from Mixed Fleet crew who went on strike over pay. The July strike is to get the staff travel back.

Tell the BA crew I know that then, they believe they're going on strike over pay.

nbmike · Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:06 pm

Ryga wrote:

Tell the BA crew I know that then, they believe they're going on strike over pay.

Correct, the strike is about both pay and the perks, both issues are joined as BA removed the perks as a direct result of going on strike in relation to pay. The union and BA came to an agreement about pay and the reinstatement of some of the perks immediately, however some are only going to be reinstated after a set time period. The union recommended the deal, however the deal was offered as you take it all or leave it. When it was put to a vote the membership of the union - ie the rank and file cabin crew rejected the deal, - the whole deal, pay and perks reinstatement, saying that the ballot was incredibly close. Under union rules if the membership reject the deal, the union have to go back to the table. BA are trying to get the union to ballot again however this time just on the pay deal, just to add a further complication to the deal, the union are taking legal action regarding the loss of the perks.

gunnerman · Wed Jun 28, 2017 6:47 pm

Well nearly right. Prior to 2011, BA cabin crew/flight attendants based at LHR were either WorldWide, operating widebodies on longhaul flights, or EuroFleet, operating narrowbodies plus a handful of 763s on shorthaul. Both these crew groups still exist. BA believed that separating crew this way made it hard to produce efficient crew schedules, and created Mixed Fleet. Mixed Fleet crew members (all the new hires since 2011) operate a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul rotations, and are qualified and current on A320 series plus two widebody aircraft families (UK aviation regs only allow currency on 3 families at the same time). The one exception to the 2011 rule is that staff who came from British Midland when it was merged into BA were added to EuroFleet.

Mixed Fleet commenced in November 2010, and since then all LHR cabin crew recruitment has been into MF. The contract was based on the Gatwick Fleet contract, even the starting salary and daily allowance were the same.

The crew who came over from bmi went into EuroFleet but were offered £10,000 to move into MF. The MF contract is noticeably worse then the EF contract.but this offer was taken up by some who needed the instant money.

This strike is different to the previous ones, which were about pay. The pay dispute has been settled, but BA withdrew the staff travel concession from Mixed Fleet crew who went on strike over pay. The July strike is to get the staff travel back.

Unite claims that BA has a number of sanctions against those who took strike action, including cutting bonus payments and removing staff travel concessions.

bhdw787 · Wed Jun 28, 2017 9:06 pm

Ryga wrote:
JannEejit wrote:
Ryga wrote:
Personally I do not agree with the strike, I looked at joining British Airways as Crew many years ago, and saw how shocking the wage was from the contract. It is my opinion that the crew knew what they was getting themselves into, they get many benefits such as concessions.

Do they get concessions on their rent, morrgages, gas and electricity bills, or cheap petrol for their cars, which incidentally some of them have been found sleeping in at Heathrow inbetween shifts because they can't afford to live a sensible distance from base.

No doubt it's all the customer's fault though for "demanding" cheap tickets and refusing to pay extra to be seated next to their loved ones...

Once again, they knew what they was getting themselves into. They knew the contracts, and the contracts haven't changed since they started... (I know, I went to apply for it. Glad I didn't ) Like I said, there's plenty of better paying airlines to chose from.

No. The contracts have changed, the working conditions have changed under EASA and the pay is not as advertised, it's even worse. More experienced crew (3+ years) were mislead when it came to earnings and the level of take home pay continues to fall from what I've been shown, Until you've experienced the situation on Mixed Fleet you can't really pass comment.

airbazar · Wed Jun 28, 2017 9:15 pm

bhdw787 wrote:
[
No. The contracts have changed, the working conditions have changed under EASA and the pay is not as advertised, it's even worse. More experienced crew (3+ years) were mislead when it came to earnings and the level of take home pay continues to fall from what I've been shown, Until you've experienced the situation on Mixed Fleet you can't really pass comment.

It still doesn't change the fact that if you don't like your job, you're free to go find another one. I will never understand this "lets strike and screw consumers mentality" type of business. People who do that get zero sympathy from me, the paying consumer.

BelAviaFan · Wed Jun 28, 2017 9:17 pm

anstar wrote:
BA Mixed fleet crews were formed around 4 years ago to lower BA's crewing costs. Mixed refers to the fact the fly both long and short haul to maximise flying hours. BA also have legacy fleets such as euro (short haul) and world wide (long haul).

Mixed fleet crews are currently on strike to improve pay and rostering conditions. Currently the mixed fleet crews will get around 1k GBP ($1250 USD) per month after tax as a salary which in London is not a liveable wage.

An in-depth analysis: http://www.luchtzak.be/airlines/iag/bri ... -striking/

bhdw787 · Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:42 pm

airbazar wrote:
bhdw787 wrote:
[
No. The contracts have changed, the working conditions have changed under EASA and the pay is not as advertised, it's even worse. More experienced crew (3+ years) were mislead when it came to earnings and the level of take home pay continues to fall from what I've been shown, Until you've experienced the situation on Mixed Fleet you can't really pass comment.

It still doesn't change the fact that if you don't like your job, you're free to go find another one. I will never understand this "lets strike and screw consumers mentality" type of business. People who do that get zero sympathy from me, the paying consumer.

They're leaving in droves, believe me. In fact many of them already have 'another job' alongside to keep themselves in the black every month! A portion of Mixed Fleet have the drive and ambition to strive for better working conditions, just leaving doesn't solve a problem, it just passes it on to somebody else. I have zero sympathy for people who lack any form of humility and don't have it within themselves to understand that life isn't just as simple as 'get another job'.....but hey, I'm not going to bring a spoon to a sword fight.

It's completely ridiculous to think these crew WANT to screw the consumer, that's not true.....these are the same crew that look after YOUR wellbeing on board, day in day out, often to the detriment of their own.

TheFlyingDisk · Wed Jun 28, 2017 11:20 pm

airbazar wrote:
bhdw787 wrote:
[
No. The contracts have changed, the working conditions have changed under EASA and the pay is not as advertised, it's even worse. More experienced crew (3+ years) were mislead when it came to earnings and the level of take home pay continues to fall from what I've been shown, Until you've experienced the situation on Mixed Fleet you can't really pass comment.

It still doesn't change the fact that if you don't like your job, you're free to go find another one. I will never understand this "lets strike and screw consumers mentality" type of business. People who do that get zero sympathy from me, the paying consumer.

Not striking will mean staff will be screwed which will increase attrition. Furthermore there will be the chance that the attractiveness of the job will be reduced causing the airline to have difficulties in finding replacements. And once that happens, you as a consumer will be screwed anyway.

So I really don't see why crews (or any other employee for that matter) shouldn't be allowed to fight for living wages & benefits.

bamf777 · Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:06 am

Mixed Fleet was established November 2010 for the reasons above. Cabin crew on mixed fleet operate separately to those on BA Mainline EuroFleet, WorldWide and Gatwick single fleet contracts. It should be noted that recruitment for cabin crew is ONLY open for Mixed Fleet and Gatwick Fleet on BA mainline and for BA CityFlyer (based at London City) these are all on separate contracts. Mixed fleet crew operate select long and short haul routes from LHR. But can be used in times of disruption (and vise versa) to operate WW, EF and LGW routes.
Mixed Fleet crew are all licensed to operate Airbus A319/320/321 and Boeing 777 aircraft and are then segregated into A320/777/787/A380 or A320/777/787/747 groups.

Starting salary for MF cabin crew is £12500 and £3.00 hourly pay whilst 'on duty' I.e whenever you start your duty to when you land back at LHR. There was a 'performance bonus' paid every 3 moths with conditions applied.
The annual salary rises to £15000 (you must be Senior Cabin Crew - SCCM trained for £15000). If you wish to increase your salary further you must become a CSM (Customer Service Manager- the overall manger on board, who is also responsible of the permanent management and HR duties of a team of up to 12 cabin crew. As well as the crew on the day) which is £27000 basic salary, with annual bonuses and £3.00 hourly pay on top. It must be noted that CSM's can sometimes earn LESS than cabin crew on the £15000 pay scale!

The initial strike was due to pay conditions - I support this.

The new strike is because those who did go on strike want their staff travel consessions and bonuses back (these are non-contractual benefits and can be removed by BA at any time). These benefits were clearly quoted as being removed if they chose to strike and it was said time and time again. These crew chose to strike accepting they would lose these "benefits" for 6months - 1 year.

Too many "experienced" and "long serving" mixed fleet crew are leaving as the pay is not good enough and they don't necessarily want to be promoted to an undervalued job (CSM). They are being replaced by a lot of very young inexperienced crew (I have no age problems, but I've seen it first hand) and this is impacting the customer, unfortunately!

I supported the pervious strikes because better pay was needed as it was affecting the paying customer with what u said above. The new strikes I do not agree with unfortunately - it's such a shame....

okie73 · Thu Jun 29, 2017 2:18 am

Wow.....welcome to the normal life of crew in the US.

Bavd · Thu Jun 29, 2017 6:20 am

okie73 wrote:
Wow.....welcome to the normal life of crew in the US.

And that is precisely what we are all trying to prevent from happening....

Ryga · Thu Jun 29, 2017 8:03 am

bhdw787 wrote:
airbazar wrote:
bhdw787 wrote:
[
No. The contracts have changed, the working conditions have changed under EASA and the pay is not as advertised, it's even worse. More experienced crew (3+ years) were mislead when it came to earnings and the level of take home pay continues to fall from what I've been shown, Until you've experienced the situation on Mixed Fleet you can't really pass comment.

It still doesn't change the fact that if you don't like your job, you're free to go find another one. I will never understand this "lets strike and screw consumers mentality" type of business. People who do that get zero sympathy from me, the paying consumer.

They're leaving in droves, believe me. In fact many of them already have 'another job' alongside to keep themselves in the black every month! A portion of Mixed Fleet have the drive and ambition to strive for better working conditions, just leaving doesn't solve a problem, it just passes it on to somebody else. I have zero sympathy for people who lack any form of humility and don't have it within themselves to understand that life isn't just as simple as 'get another job'.....but hey, I'm not going to bring a spoon to a sword fight.

It's completely ridiculous to think these crew WANT to screw the consumer, that's not true.....these are the same crew that look after YOUR wellbeing on board, day in day out, often to the detriment of their own.

Then tell me why there ARE crew who have been with the airline for little over a year, and are joining the strike... I call bullsh*t. You can't sit there and tell me they didn't know what they was getting themselves into, whether it's the Union telling them to strike or not.

anstar · Thu Jun 29, 2017 8:46 am

Baexecutive wrote:
Mixed Fleet was set up almost 7 years ago as a result of concessions not being reached by crew on the older fleets. A decision was made to introduce a lower cost effective/flexible fleet into the airline which would fly both long and short haul out of LHR.

Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.

Whether you agree or disagree with the strike is irrelevant as these people clearly are demonstrating their right to stand up for what they believe is right and I take my hat off to them.

1500-1900 a month? Not a chance. Its more like 1000 for those I know at MF. A CSM (in charge of an aircraft upto an A380) will earn about 2k a month after tax... so how does an FA earn 1900?

A CSM at BA will earn about the same as an FA at Easyjet... Whcih goes to show how rubbish the BA contracts are.

redroo · Thu Jun 29, 2017 9:47 am

Someone correct my figures if they're wrong

12000 GBP + 220hr a 2m roster * 6 rosters * £3ph = c16,000 GBP

Which is about 27,000 AUD and pretty poor. About $400 a week. Average skippy wages $80,000.

Don't know how you'd survive in London on that.

garpd · Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:06 am

redroo wrote:
Someone correct my figures if they're wrong

12000 GBP + 220hr a 2m roster * 6 rosters * £3ph = c16,000 GBP

Which is about 27,000 AUD and pretty poor. About $400 a week. Average skippy wages $80,000.

Don't know how you'd survive in London on that.

You can't. In London, £25K a year is borderline. These crew probably live outside London.

£16K P.A. is nothing in the UK. In my previous job I was on 18K and living only just within that. As soon as some big bill reared it's ugly head it would cause a financial rippled effect that would last for months.
It's not a good life!

If this is truely what the BA crews are getting and they were promised more, I support the strike. I'm flying BA at the end of August, so I hope the matter is resolved by then.
BA could solve this issue quickly by cutting expenses where it realy should: From the top down. Lead by example.

gunnerman · Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:27 pm

Senior BA management repeatedly promised that pay would be 10 per cent above the market rate. However, basic pay starts at just £12,192 with £3 an hour whilst on duty plus performance bonus. Unite, the union that represents the majority of cabin crew, claims that gross pay is on average £16,000 a year but BA management claims that their pay data for full-time crew for 12 months between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2016 shows earnings from £21,151 to £27,356.

Baexecutive · Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:56 pm

anstar wrote:
Baexecutive wrote:
Mixed Fleet was set up almost 7 years ago as a result of concessions not being reached by crew on the older fleets. A decision was made to introduce a lower cost effective/flexible fleet into the airline which would fly both long and short haul out of LHR.

Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.

Whether you agree or disagree with the strike is irrelevant as these people clearly are demonstrating their right to stand up for what they believe is right and I take my hat off to them.

1500-1900 a month? Not a chance. Its more like 1000 for those I know at MF. A CSM (in charge of an aircraft upto an A380) will earn about 2k a month after tax... so how does an FA earn 1900?

I had no idea it was so low. If it's that low why do they apply for the job and how can they afford to live?

A CSM at BA will earn about the same as an FA at Easyjet... Whcih goes to show how rubbish the BA contracts are.

gunnerman · Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:33 am

Baexecutive wrote:
Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.

You don't know how much they earn and nobody knows with certainty. However, the payroll data can be made available to an independent auditor who has been approved by both BA and Unite. It's surprisingly easy to get the answer. All that's necessary is to run a report which extracts the data from the database for a period of time, say 12 months to 31 May 2017, and load it into a spreadsheet. Filters can then be applied to get the numbers required, e.g. for full-time crew what was the annual basic pay, duty hours pay, bonus pay, etc.

The auditor's report on crew earnings will then show who is right as you've got Unite claiming £16,000 and BA claiming over £21,000.

Bongodog1964 · Fri Jun 30, 2017 12:03 pm

The problem with various quotes on wages is that no two people use the same basis:
Firstly you can only ever use gross pay, take home pay is entirely dependent of your tax code, whilst the default code allows £11500 of earnings before tax each year, many people have either lower codes due to other earnings and some have higher codes due to additional personal allowances
The next factor is overnight allowances, if these are an allowance to cover the cost of staying away from home, they are probably paid tax free, and should not really be considered to be part of your income, if however they are more generous than the actual cost, perhaps they should be.
Then we have pension costs, they are deducted by the employer, but should be considered as income.

BA as with any airline will probably be lumping in basic salary, flying pay, overnight allowances, pension etc when they state an income, Unite however probably just look at basic pay.

there's no way that anyone on a basic of £12k a year plus flying pay will only take home an average of £1k per month if they have a standard tax code. Their tax and national insurance would only be around £10 per month. If however they had not been into work at all, that might be the case.

7673mech · Fri Jun 30, 2017 12:03 pm

Ryga wrote:
bhdw787 wrote:
airbazar wrote:
It still doesn't change the fact that if you don't like your job, you're free to go find another one. I will never understand this "lets strike and screw consumers mentality" type of business. People who do that get zero sympathy from me, the paying consumer.

They're leaving in droves, believe me. In fact many of them already have 'another job' alongside to keep themselves in the black every month! A portion of Mixed Fleet have the drive and ambition to strive for better working conditions, just leaving doesn't solve a problem, it just passes it on to somebody else. I have zero sympathy for people who lack any form of humility and don't have it within themselves to understand that life isn't just as simple as 'get another job'.....but hey, I'm not going to bring a spoon to a sword fight.

It's completely ridiculous to think these crew WANT to screw the consumer, that's not true.....these are the same crew that look after YOUR wellbeing on board, day in day out, often to the detriment of their own.

Then tell me why there ARE crew who have been with the airline for little over a year, and are joining the strike... I call bullsh*t. You can't sit there and tell me they didn't know what they was getting themselves into, whether it's the Union telling them to strike or not.

Not trying to be smart - because they are in the union? A strike doesn't work if only part of the union participates.

gunnerman · Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:24 pm

Bongodog1964 wrote:
The problem with various quotes on wages is that no two people use the same basis:

My post just before yours addresses precisely this issue.

Baexecutive · Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:00 pm

gunnerman wrote:
Baexecutive wrote:
Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.

You don't know how much they earn and nobody knows with certainty. However, the payroll data can be made available to an independent auditor who has been approved by both BA and Unite. It's surprisingly easy to get the answer. All that's necessary is to run a report which extracts the data from the database for a period of time, say 12 months to 31 May 2017, and load it into a spreadsheet. Filters can then be applied to get the numbers required, e.g. for full-time crew what was the annual basic pay, duty hours pay, bonus pay, etc.

The auditor's report on crew earnings will then show who is right as you've got Unite claiming £16,000 and BA claiming over £21,000.

Actually I do know (with certainty) how much they earn as I used to work for them hence where my figures came from. The difference in range is due to the amount of flying, UPL, AL and if it was bonus month or not.

readytotaxi · Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:27 pm

slice of humble pie anyone?

gunnerman · Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:33 pm

Baexecutive wrote:

Actually I do know (with certainty) how much they earn as I used to work for them hence where my figures came from. The difference in range is due to the amount of flying, UPL, AL and if it was bonus month or not.

All you know with certainty is how much you and a few other people earned a while ago. But the sole source of reliable data is in the payroll database which has all the pay data for all the thousands of crew members employed since November 2010. Why do you have a problem understanding that?

Baexecutive · Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:09 pm

I don't have a problem understanding anything mate so put your handbag away!

LTU932 · Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:28 pm

anstar wrote:
Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.

Maybe those figures are before taxes? I earned a similar figure in Euros before taxes (in an non-aviation job) and while I don't know how UK salary tax and NHS (which I presume is automatically deducted from the pay for payroll employees as well) is being calculated, from what I experienced in Germany, £1500-£1900 before taxes and NHS would be around £1000, maybe £1200 at best.

gunnerman · Sun Jul 02, 2017 1:45 pm

LTU932 wrote:
anstar wrote:
Typically crew take home between £1500-£1900 a month dependant on how much they fly/bonus month vs the older fleets who earn a lot more than this however have built up their salary over years of loyalty to the airline and union agreed benefits.
Maybe those figures are before taxes? I earned a similar figure in Euros before taxes (in an non-aviation job) and while I don't know how UK salary tax and NHS (which I presume is automatically deducted from the pay for payroll employees as well) is being calculated, from what I experienced in Germany, £1500-£1900 before taxes and NHS would be around £1000, maybe £1200 at best.

No, take home pay is what you get after compulsory deductions such as tax, national insurance and pension. In the case of crew, they earn a basic salary which is subject to the compulsory deductions plus a range of other income which are not necessarily fully taxed.such as allowances, incentives and performance bonuses.

The problem with asking crew how much they earn is that you get a variety of answers as some quote basic pay before tax, basic pay after tax, total gross earnings for their best month, total net earnings for their worse month, etc, etc.

hiflyeras · Sun Jul 02, 2017 7:21 pm

okie73 wrote:
Wow.....welcome to the normal life of crew in the US.

Hardly. This makes airline labor relations in the US look like a picnic. I've always heard that BA crew were unhappy but I had no idea the mess they're in. Multiple contracts for crews that are then sometimes working the same flight? What a nightmare. I worked through the 'B scale' days in the US airline industry and it was ugly...this sounds three times as bad with mainline, mixed fleet, LGW and Euro sometimes working together at different pay rates . And then to take away their travel benefits as 'punishment'...outrageous, especially considered they're barely making ends meet and can likely not afford to live in London due to the poor compensation. I'm guessing many of the 'mixed fleet' crew live in more affordable cities in the UK and commute to work via BA. Hard to do with no bennies. My support is fully with them and shame on their union for letting things get to this point.

Bongodog1964 · Sun Jul 02, 2017 8:57 pm

hiflyeras wrote:
okie73 wrote:
Wow.....welcome to the normal life of crew in the US.

Hardly. This makes airline labor relations in the US look like a picnic. I've always heard that BA crew were unhappy but I had no idea the mess they're in. Multiple contracts for crews that are then sometimes working the same flight? What a nightmare. I worked through the 'B scale' days in the US airline industry and it was ugly...this sounds three times as bad with mainline, mixed fleet, LGW and Euro sometimes working together at different pay rates . And then to take away their travel benefits as 'punishment'...outrageous, especially considered they're barely making ends meet and can likely not afford to live in London due to the poor compensation. I'm guessing many of the 'mixed fleet' crew live in more affordable cities in the UK and commute to work via BA. Hard to do with no bennies. My support is fully with them and shame on their union for letting things get to this point.

There's no mixing of crews on different contracts, mixed fleet only work with fellow mixed fleet crew etc. Additionally there's probably not much difference in pay, conditions etc between mixed fleet and LGW fleet, the only thing being one is at LGW and one at LHR
Additionally a route will only be operated by one fleet, sometimes the staffing of a route will change, generally to mixed fleet as it steadily increases, but a few have reverted back to Worldwide or Euro fleet.

This is not the 1st time BA have removed staff travel benefits as a result of striking, Unite know full well its not a contractual benefit and can be withdrawn, but do the strikers realise it, or does the Union keep quiet about the pitfalls ?

If you depend on non contractual free travel, and then choose to strike, you have really shot yourself in the foot.

The only way this race to the bottom will ever end is when people are no longer willing to work for poor money in what is deemed to be a good job. . A shortage of applicants would soon see the money rise.
I was saying yesterday that a friends daughter got invited to work for Hollister (tall, thin blond) as she had the "Hollister look" 3 years on, she has departed to be replaced by a younger version who will doubtless be pleased to be approached and invited to apply. They get away with it because working at Hollister is deemed to be a plum job amongst their friends and a step up from a supermarket checkout, its the same with being cabin crew, nice uniform and travel what could be better ? Well decent pay, a job on your doorstep and regular hours would be a good start.

hiflyeras · Sun Jul 02, 2017 9:12 pm

Thanks Bongodog....I thought they were at times flying with each other. Good to hear they're not as that'd be very contentious.

tonystan · Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:24 am

hiflyeras wrote:
My support is fully with them and shame on their union for letting things get to this point.

I don't think the union should be ashamed of anything, if anything they should be applauded.

MF was set up late 2010 following the damaging strikes of earlier that year under the BASSA union which is a branch of Unite.
When BA set up MF it was intended as "the future" and all previous agreements where torn up and all future recruitment would go exclusively to them and it was never intended for them to be unionised.

So fast forward a number of years later, the crew whom are mainly made up of people in their 20s and early 30s have managed to organise themselves with a union under Unite (not BASSA) and collectively rattle the cages at BA. I don't think any manager foresaw anything on this scale ever happening with their "pride and joy" crew base. The gloss has certainly worn off the much trumpeted "future" of BA crew and the old rot of management interference and greed continues the cycle of industrial relations disasters at BA!

chrisnh · Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:45 am

Andy33 wrote:
Ryga wrote:
mozart wrote:
I understand that this year has seen a number of strikes already from so-called mixed fleet crews at British Airways.

What are those mixed fleet crews? What is different about them from other crews? And why are they on strike?

BA Mixed Fleet are the crew that operate the core fleet at London Heathrow, and various routes etc.. At Heathrow there are various types of contracts, the contract being offered for the past decade or so is the Mixed Fleet contract.
Other contracts at Heathrow include the Worldwide Fleet (which tends to be all of the old horses at Heathrow, you can't get hold of this contract anymore), and there is a Euro fleet. London Gatwick also has their own contract, Gatwick fleet/Beach Fleet whatever you wish to call it.

So it's important to know that it is only the London Heathrow Mixed Fleet that have been, and will be on strike. The reason for the strike, is due to pay disputes. BA crew believe that they were promised a certain wage in their contracts, and have not been getting this wage.

Well nearly right. Prior to 2011, BA cabin crew/flight attendants based at LHR were either WorldWide, operating widebodies on longhaul flights, or EuroFleet, operating narrowbodies plus a handful of 763s on shorthaul. Both these crew groups still exist. BA believed that separating crew this way made it hard to produce efficient crew schedules, and created Mixed Fleet. Mixed Fleet crew members (all the new hires since 2011) operate a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul rotations, and are qualified and current on A320 series plus two widebody aircraft families (UK aviation regs only allow currency on 3 families at the same time). The one exception to the 2011 rule is that staff who came from British Midland when it was merged into BA were added to EuroFleet.
I really wouldn't call EuroFleet and WorldWide crew "old horses", at least anywhere near LHR while anyone in BA uniform is listening, since between them they still form 60% of LHR based crew members so the chances are you'll be overheard by one of them.
Because Mixed Fleet has only been around for 6 years (not 10), not everyone in EF or WW is even early middle-aged, let alone old.
Gatwick crew base has its own fleet structure and union agreement, they only have A320 series and 772ERs based there. Gatwick also crews the A318 on LCY-JFK.
Then there's the crews who operate the Embraers for subsidiary BA Cityflyer which has its own AOC, the 757/767 Paris based crews of subsidiary BA OpenSkies, again with its own AOC, and crews at the various International crew bases round the world, supplying language qualified crews to flights operated by both MixedFleet and WorldWide. None are involved in the strike either.

This strike is different to the previous ones, which were about pay. The pay dispute has been settled, but BA withdrew the staff travel concession from Mixed Fleet crew who went on strike over pay. The July strike is to get the staff travel back.

This is very informative. Thank you! But why are some U.S. cities 'Mixed' (LAS) while others (BOS) not? Is it because LAS is a newer destination? Or is it a LHR/LGW thing?

LHRFlyer · Mon Jul 03, 2017 11:26 am

tonystan wrote:
hiflyeras wrote:
My support is fully with them and shame on their union for letting things get to this point.

I don't think the union should be ashamed of anything, if anything they should be applauded.

MF was set up late 2010 following the damaging strikes of earlier that year under the BASSA union which is a branch of Unite.
When BA set up MF it was intended as "the future" and all previous agreements where torn up and all future recruitment would go exclusively to them and it was never intended for them to be unionised.

So fast forward a number of years later, the crew whom are mainly made up of people in their 20s and early 30s have managed to organise themselves with a union under Unite (not BASSA) and collectively rattle the cages at BA. I don't think any manager foresaw anything on this scale ever happening with their "pride and joy" crew base. The gloss has certainly worn off the much trumpeted "future" of BA crew and the old rot of management interference and greed continues the cycle of industrial relations disasters at BA!

It is categorically not true that MF was never intended to be unionised.

Unite were offered bargaining rights for Mixed Fleet right from the outset. The only condition was that they were separate bargaining unit from EuroFleet and Worldwide at LHR.

I don't think the union can claim the strike is a success.

The point of the threat of industrial action is the impact of strength in numbers and leverage over the operation.

Even though we're in the peak summer schedule the rate of cancellations is less than 1% of the schedule.

At most the strike is an irritation and I would question how wise it is for what must be a very small group of employees to be testing the patience of the airline.

There are also questions to be asked of other LHR crews who were happy to cheer on industrial action when they would have known full well that the company would have very well-honed contingency plans and there would be consequences for those who went on strike.

I'm not against unions or better terms for Mixed Fleet but there were many other options than calling an ineffective strike.

Andy33 · Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:00 pm

chrisnh wrote:
This is very informative. Thank you! But why are some U.S. cities 'Mixed' (LAS) while others (BOS) not? Is it because LAS is a newer destination? Or is it a LHR/LGW thing?

First of all, routes from LGW are operated by LGW crews who are entirely separate from those at LHR, and have a separate union agreement.
Within the LHR crew fleets, the allocation of routes to fleets changes every season, as the number of staff in Mixed Fleet gradually increases to replace those in WorldWide and Eurofleet who retire or leave. Routes can move either to or from Mixed Fleet so that the crew scheduling team can make up efficient rosters with the number of staff available and the aircraft types they are current on. Nobody can be current on all the aircraft types BA has at LHR because UK aviation regs restrict the number of aircraft families any crew member can be current on to three. The only constant is that all 767 rotations will be operated by EuroFleet as Mixed Fleet and WorldWide staff aren't current on them.

gunnerman · Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:27 pm

chrisnh wrote:
Andy33 wrote:
Ryga wrote:

BA Mixed Fleet are the crew that operate the core fleet at London Heathrow, and various routes etc.. At Heathrow there are various types of contracts, the contract being offered for the past decade or so is the Mixed Fleet contract.
Other contracts at Heathrow include the Worldwide Fleet (which tends to be all of the old horses at Heathrow, you can't get hold of this contract anymore), and there is a Euro fleet. London Gatwick also has their own contract, Gatwick fleet/Beach Fleet whatever you wish to call it.

So it's important to know that it is only the London Heathrow Mixed Fleet that have been, and will be on strike. The reason for the strike, is due to pay disputes. BA crew believe that they were promised a certain wage in their contracts, and have not been getting this wage.

Well nearly right. Prior to 2011, BA cabin crew/flight attendants based at LHR were either WorldWide, operating widebodies on longhaul flights, or EuroFleet, operating narrowbodies plus a handful of 763s on shorthaul. Both these crew groups still exist. BA believed that separating crew this way made it hard to produce efficient crew schedules, and created Mixed Fleet. Mixed Fleet crew members (all the new hires since 2011) operate a mixture of shorthaul and longhaul rotations, and are qualified and current on A320 series plus two widebody aircraft families (UK aviation regs only allow currency on 3 families at the same time). The one exception to the 2011 rule is that staff who came from British Midland when it was merged into BA were added to EuroFleet.
I really wouldn't call EuroFleet and WorldWide crew "old horses", at least anywhere near LHR while anyone in BA uniform is listening, since between them they still form 60% of LHR based crew members so the chances are you'll be overheard by one of them.
Because Mixed Fleet has only been around for 6 years (not 10), not everyone in EF or WW is even early middle-aged, let alone old.
Gatwick crew base has its own fleet structure and union agreement, they only have A320 series and 772ERs based there. Gatwick also crews the A318 on LCY-JFK.
Then there's the crews who operate the Embraers for subsidiary BA Cityflyer which has its own AOC, the 757/767 Paris based crews of subsidiary BA OpenSkies, again with its own AOC, and crews at the various International crew bases round the world, supplying language qualified crews to flights operated by both MixedFleet and WorldWide. None are involved in the strike either.

This strike is different to the previous ones, which were about pay. The pay dispute has been settled, but BA withdrew the staff travel concession from Mixed Fleet crew who went on strike over pay. The July strike is to get the staff travel back.

This is very informative. Thank you! But why are some U.S. cities 'Mixed' (LAS) while others (BOS) not? Is it because LAS is a newer destination? Or is it a LHR/LGW thing?

BA needs all three of its cabin crew fleets at LHR - Worldwide Fleet, Eurofleet and Mixed Fleet - to operate its flights. As MF is lower cost than WWF, a marginal long-haul route may be chosen to be operated by MF. However, the scope for switching routes to MF is limited by factors such as the number of crew available and the EASA attestation for an aircraft type which is held by each crew member. It has to be said, though, that as time goes on, more routes will move to MF as the crew numbers decline in WWF and EF and as numbers increase in MF. Here is what I believe to be the long-haul MF routes.

Abu Dhabi
Abuja
Atlanta
Austin
Baltimore
Bangkok
Beijing
Cairo
Calgary
Cape Town
Chicago
Doha
Houston
Johannesburg
Kuala Lumpur
Lagos
Las Vegas
Luanda
Miami
Muscat
Nairobi
Philadelphia
San Diego
San Jose
Santiago
Seattle
Seoul
Shanghai
Singapore
Sydney
Tel Aviv
Toronto
Vancouver

rjwalker2514 · Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:46 pm

So Qatar are lending their crew but why the planes. BA use A320s so could the Qatari Crewe not just fly those?

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