I read today that BA is planning to raise the retirement age of its flight and cabin crews to 60 and 65 (repectively). This is probably old news in the industry, the sort of news that the public pick up a few weeks after ‘”people like us'” do. I think there has been quiet a bit of talk about it, and currently the Unions aren’t happy with the proposal. what is the exact proposal, and why aren’t the unions happy?
What is the average retirement age for other airlines? Why is BA’s fairly low? I know that some BA pilots upon retirement go into management/training roles within the airline. I guess that regulation dictates the max age of airline pilots on health and fitness grounds.
By: Moondance - 24th March 2006 at 22:54
Can….worms……..of…….arrange into a well known phrase or saying!
In the UK (and probably beyond), there appear to be three distinct elements to this.
1. UK anti-ageism legislation, likely to be in force by October 2006.
2. ICAO allowing pilots to continue operating multi-crew aircraft in command beyond the age of 60 up to age 65 from November 2006.
3. The huge cost (mainly to employers) of funding existing final salary pension schemes.
Add to that certain ICAO member States (US and France being the chief suspects) may ‘file a difference’ to this proposed change to prohibit over 60s being in command over their airspace, and interesting times may be ahead.
Spotted reggies and new ‘go faster’ stripes painted on the side of some new wonder jet seem important to the enthusiast community, but there is little that is going to excite the employed pilot more than talk of f???ing around with the pension scheme, and changing a much anticipated retirement date.
Check out the 22 pages and 62,000 views of this on pprune http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=206096
By: kevinwm - 24th March 2006 at 10:58
If the pilots and cabin staff do decided not to agree to this , you will find that the rest of BA staff will also reject it , which will lead to an all out strike, I think Mr Welsh will have to go back to his advisers , or get a new set of advisers as they have not done to well in the past
I just hope That Mr Welsh see sense ,or is this a cynical ploy to get ride of Staff only time will tell
By: OneLeft - 24th March 2006 at 09:47
You can’t take this single subject in isolation as it connected to the fact that the British Airways staff pension fund has a HUGE hole in it and how the company intend to deal with that fact. It is however convenient that forthcoming changes in European law make it easy for BA to up the retirement age, which suits the needs of the pension, whilst claiming that they can’t avoid doing so.
This is simply one part of an 8 part plan to plug the pension deficit without costing the company any more.
Kevin is right in that the pilot community feels very strongly about the subject of pensions, and it will be interesting to see their reaction to the companies proposals which we were advised of only yesterday.
One irony in this is that last year a group of about 25 cabin crew who were coming up to retirement at 55 approached the company to ask for the option to stay on until 60 and were flatly refused!
1L.
By: kevinwm - 24th March 2006 at 07:59
Still to be approved by the Unions and Staff, and can see fairly stormy weather for BA over this
By: Deano - 24th March 2006 at 06:54
Having attended a Professional Pilot Seminar last November, John Monks who is head of recruitment for BA told us this at this point and he said the reasons were the government was bring in new legislation regarding age discrimination, I think they retire their captains at 55, so effectively if a captain wanted to stay on until he was 60 and was not allowed to due to BA’s policy this I guess would constitute discrimination hence the change of policy.
By: steve rowell - 24th March 2006 at 04:53
As far as i knew the retirement age for airline pilots has always been 60
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March 23, 2006 at 11:49 pm