Below the report by your BeCA Vice-President of the main events that happened in Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium since the first edition of 2016 of our Cockpit Flash.

Dear Colleagues,

Another 6 months have gone by. When summing up what has happened in our company, I found it hard to believe that it has only been 6 months. It feels so much longer.
Just after the publication of the last Cockpit Flash, we were invited by our management to start talks and negotiations on the “Volaris Project”. The plan was to put 4 of our 5 aircraft in Guadalajara in Mexico, flown by our own crew during December 2016 and January 2017. The idea, which we can only support, was to raise our winter production to a higher level. A lot of pressure was put on the negotiators. Mainly due to the short time frame in which everything needed to be put in motion. We succeeded in making a deal by the end of September 2016. We know that not everybody was happy with this project since it meant a big change in the style of operations we were used to.

But somehow, someone forgot that this project was only possible with a green light from the Mexican Civil Aviation Authority. Which never came. This meant that a lot of hard work done in preparing this project was useless. On the bright side, we all got an American Visa and we are more than ready to do a similar project next winter. Let us hope President Trump doesn’t develop an aversion towards Belgians meanwhile.

Immediately after these talks, we were invited again at the negotiating table to discuss “Fast-Track”. Apparently Fast Track existed already within the group as a cost-cutting program with another name. But following our end of year results of 2015-2016, this program got put on steroids and got ‘rebranded’. This project aims at creating centers of excellence in the group airlines so we can virtually operate as one airline. For example, if in the UK they do the best job on flight-planning, they will start doing this for all the airlines in the group. That this creates job losses in the other 3 airlines of the group is clear. At the moment, only ground staff is impacted and we might say goodbye to a few nice people who we worked with for years. We are very cautious on what the future might bring both for ground crew and flying staff. We already see that the Belgian crews are used to accommodate for peaks in production in other airlines in the group and new markets. Something we are closely monitoring.

Our end of year results are still written in black figures, but we have no clue on how many magic tricks were pulled off to do this. Next month, we will have the Economical and Financial Work Council and hope to get a better picture. We are very curious to hear how much we are impacted by the 3-hour delay, Altea,… This, combined with the canceled Volaris project and the Fast-Track program made us decide to put our demand on a refund of the invested salary under the umbrella of the Cost-Competitiveness in the fridge.
By listening to our management, we know that our future is bright and sunny. We just don’t know how we will operate and where it will take us. It is clear that it will be different from the past years. This made already a ‘few’ colleagues leave the company.

Next month, we will have another Thomas Cook Pilot Group meeting to get some information on what is happening in the other airlines of the group. And we were invited to the European Work Council. As soon as we have digested the information given in these fora, we will send our Cook members an e-news. Stay tuned!

Bart Smet, Vice-President TCAB