It has come to our attention that Brussels Airlines is hiring German MPL First Officers.
As the representative of pilots in Belgium, we deeply regret this situation when dozens of Belgian pilots are jobless and would have liked to get the opportunity to apply for the Belgian national company, as Brussels Airlines tends to promote itself. They claimed that Belgian pilots did not have the required skills and competences, which is an unacceptable statement.
As a professional association, we believe that priority must be given to our Belgian jobseeker pilots when job opportunities arise within a Belgian operator. The choice of Brussels Airlines to hire foreign pilots is a serious hinder to the latter category. We therefore sent a letter to Brussels Airlines CEO, Bernard Gustin, to express our surprise and disappointment about this situation.
We urged M. Gustin to give job opportunities to Belgian pilots and we asked him to clarify why they consider that Belgian pilots are “less qualified”.