Since last summer, Brussels Airlines faced many challenges: the integration of the operations of Thomas Cook Belgium (TCAB) in November, the launch of the “Neptune” long haul project in Dusseldorf, the soft industrial actions of the pilots, the dismissal of the CEO. TCAB integration triggered a lot of reactions, since it affects the career not only of the TCAB pilots but also of dozens of b.air pilots.

Integration of Thomas Cook

Till the summer season the Thomas Cook crew integration had been well debated in the cockpits and the crew room but it is only after the end of the summer season that we had a chance to meet the crews and welcome them on board as colleagues.

Since then we have met new colleagues and discovered many new destinations.

At BeCA, we have already acted the merging. Both companies had a BeCA Vice-President representative in BeCA Executive Committee. Both VPs (Bart Smet and Christophe Sambre) are now already working together as Co-VPs to provide a better synergy and offer a better assistance to the members.

At the moment, the former Thomas Cook crews are frozen into a CLA 32Bis that secures the working condition they had in Thomas Cook while already working for Brusselsairlines. While CLA32Bis is offering some protections to the former TCAB crews, it also prevents them from getting access to Brusselsairlines opportunities in their career.

This situation is not very healthy and will need to be solved as soon as possible.

The BeCA representatives and Executive Committee are involved in the negotiation process with both unions representatives to find a quick and balanced solution to the set up of a common seniority list that determines the career prospects of all pilots.
In order to ensure a serene and constructive atmosphere in the discussions, we will not communicate the different options investigated at the moment. Positive signs are showing that we are moving in the right direction and we will inform you at a later stage.

Neptune Project

Then came the Neptune project: the company will launch long haul operations out of Düsseldorf, Germany, as early as the beginning of March, well outside the seasonality period allowed in the CLA.

Seven crews of volunteers were sought among the b.air pilots to be based in DUS, but several members approached us concerning the German contract. Thanks to our experience with Belgian members flying abroad and our contacts with foreign pilot associations we’ve been able to answer their questions. However we still have some concerns about the terms of these new contracts as they still need to be presented to the pilots for signature. As the remaining Avro crews have been trained on Airbus, the last contractor pilots left the company at the end of 2017. However our management already requested an early return of those external pilots beginning of March, outside the seasonality period, and above the maximum of 20% allowed in the CLA.

Knowing that we needed those extra pilots as well as wet leased aircraft for the past years, one may see it as a good opportunity to hire more pilots inside the company to cope with this structural need.

That would make good news for the Belgian ab-initio pilots on the market as well as for the pilots waiting for a change of function inside the company.

Social Actions

Last week of January, our Union delegation started the official process for social actions in order to solve long lasting or recurrent issues in the company like the Flight time/Duty time application, under crewing/contractors, crew meals, quality of headsets…

First step was to have a conciliation meeting in order to find a solution.So far, the soft actions have been suspended as the company agreed to provide acceptable solutions at or before the deadlines established at the conciliation. If not a strike notice will come into force with harder actions.

CEO Dismissal

On 5 February, an extraordinary CE was held in Frankfurt to notify our CEO of his dismissal. An extraordinary Works Council meeting was held later on in Brussels where we learnt that Bernard Gustin would leave the company by the end of March. He will take his new function in Elia, the energy provider, where he was appointed in May 2017.

We have received reassuring statements from the CEO of Eurowings that Long Haul African flights will be maintained in BRU and even expanded but we still expect to see changes in the coming months on the network.

We hope that the reshuffled management will quickly solve the current pilot issues, to be able to strengthen the position of the company into Eurowings and address the new challenges ahead of us.

Goodbye Avro

Aside from the industrial issues, the last part of this year was marked by the phase out of our last Avro. For me it’s like saying goodbye to a good old friend who’s retiring. I started my career as pilot with some of those aircraft that were back then brand new from the factory. If after some time, pilots were joking about the design : “such a particular logic”, “typical English stuff” were often heard amongst the pilots ! Not an easy aircraft to learn but well redundant. Looking backwards, it was certainly not a high performance aircraft but that’s common to all 4 engine aircraft, isn’t? However most pilots will remember it as an easy and fun to fly aircraft and will especially miss its short field and soft landing capabilities.

The passengers also liked the comfort and the quietness of the plane.

Our last Avro left the company on 29 October after a ceremony and special flights organized by the company for that purpose, as you can see in the video here: http://bit.ly/2Bq86w8. Farewell Avro, we’ll miss you!

Happy retirement!

We will also remember that three of our pilots have reached the last step in their career and went into retirement end of last year after numerous flight hours spent with us. We wish a wonderful retirement to Rik Zwaenepoel, Michel Leempoels and Christian Martin!

Christophe Sambre and Bart Smet,
Co-VPs Brussels Airlines