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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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
Ryga wrote:
Tell the BA crew I know that then, they believe they're going on strike over pay.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
okie73 wrote:Wow.....welcome to the normal life of crew in the US.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bongodog1964 wrote:The problem with various quotes on wages is that no two people use the same basis:
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.
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.
anstar wrote: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.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.
LTU932 wrote:anstar wrote: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.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.
okie73 wrote:Wow.....welcome to the normal life of crew in the US.
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.
hiflyeras wrote:My support is fully with them and shame on their union for letting things get to this point.
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.
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!
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?
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?