BA pays pilots £166 an hour to break strike
Trade union Unite has accused British Airways of inflating the number of flights it is operating with its own cabin crew during a second round of strikes.
The British flag carrier claims it flew 119,000 passengers on about 930 flights over the weekend, more than the 86,000 passengers that travelled on 730 flights during the first phase of strikes.
A BA spokesman said the airline was running 55% of its short-haul schedule and 70% of long-haul flights out of its Heathrow hub over the four-day strike period.
The union said BA’s figures included leased aircraft that come with pilots and cabin crew, as well as code-sharing flights, which are run by competitors but carry BA flight numbers.
“This also does not identify the empty aircraft flights known as ‘freighters,’ which are believed to be a further third or more of departing flights,” a Unite spokeswoman sad.
Unite has also accused the airline of paying pilots an “extraordinary” £166 an hour to cover for striking staff, making them the world’s most expensive cabin crew.
Unite attacked BA for going to “enormous lengths” to divert hundreds of pilots from their everyday jobs to work as crew, with the guarantee that they will still be paid salaries of up to £120,000.
The union compared the pay with the salary of cabin crew, which it said was £15,000 a year, or £16 per hour, after five years’ experience.
BA’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, said in an internal message to staff yesterday that 63 percent of crew scheduled to work had reported for duty on Saturday, 6 percent more than during the previous weekend’s industrial action.
“Our operations have been strong and the number of crew reporting for duty means we are flying our expected contingency schedule. I would like to thank staff for their efforts which are making a real difference to our customers,” he said.
Len McLuskey, Unite assistant general secretary, told The Telegraph: “Far from cutting cabin crew costs, BA is now operating the world’s most expensive crew in a bid to break its far cheaper, world-class workforce.”
“Where is the sense in running an ever-creaky contingency operation built on throwing money at £166-an-hour pilots pretending to be crew when they have nearly 12,000 fully-trained professionals who should be working?”
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