BA pilots urged to accept pay cuts in new deal to save airline

BA, which is cutting its workforce by a third as it faces up to severely reduced demand, has been in talks with the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) for almost three months.

The proposed deal includes voluntary part-time working, voluntary severance, voluntary external secondments, and a holding pool of the equivalent of 300 pilots employed on reduced pay ready to return to flying as demand picks up.

Pilots are being asked to take pay cuts starting at 20% and reducing to 8% over the next two years then further reducing toward zero over the longer term. Balpa is recommending acceptance of the offer, with a result expected at the end of the month.

However, there would still be a potential 270 compulsory redundancies, although the union said it expected this number will fall further as voluntary mitigation measures continued to be taken up.

General secretary Brian Strutton said it was “hugely disappointing that during our extensive negotiations British Airways would not accept the full package of mitigations we put forward which would have avoided any job losses at all, and at no cost to BA”.

“As a result there will be some compulsory redundancies amongst the pilot community and that is a matter of huge regret. Given BA’s intransigence we have put together the best package we can to save as many jobs as possible.”