As a follow-up to our article on pension in our previous Cockpit Flash (http://bit.ly/2nVhnEX), you will find below an update on the current situation.

When looking backwards we can see that the Belgian government attacked first the special pension schemes that existed in Belgium. Targeted groups were: firefighters, journalists, pilots, cabin crew, train drivers… They did so with alternating success. Some categories managed to keep their special systems; we however lost the battle. As you will remember, our special pension schemes came to an end in 2012.

Thanks to some heavy lobbying and influencing from BeCA, we managed to impose transitional measures. This meant that all rights built up till the end of 2012 were kept and that most active pilots still have an earlier retirement age. Pilots who started their flying career in 2012 or later, do not have this ‘advantage’ anymore.

We, at BeCA, see the pension together with an earlier retirement age not as an advantage, but as a safety net linked to our profession. Pilots who encounter medical issues, which are often linked with an increasing age, should have an elegant way out of the profession. Otherwise these pilots might be tempted or even forced to stay in the pilot seat for the wrong reasons.

The next steps the government took were aimed at changing the general pension system or trying to change it.

Step 1: Increasing the pension age and working regime

• The legal pension age is at the moment 65 years old. Which is the maximum legal age a pilot can exercise their profession. In 2025, the pension age will be 66 and from 2030 this will become 67. How will we bridge the missing years between 65 and 67? Nobody knows.
• Early retirement age will increase to 63 if you worked 42 years.
• As an older employee you cannot take time-credit anymore as of the age of 55. This is increased to the age of 60 years.

Step 2: Reduction in financial benefits

Your best years are not always taken into account: In the past, if you hit the 45 years mark and you continued to work, you replaced the skinny years with the new years if they were more advantageous for your pension calculation. This system ensured that you replaced the years with equivalent periods (army years, study years, illness and sickness…)

• The Pension bonus has been abolished.
• Periods of unemployment are calculated in a different way, resulting in lower pension benefits.
• Part-time employment is calculated at its minimum. Involuntary part-time employment bonus is not counted as a full equivalent period.

Step 3: Reducing the average pension in Belgium

This is less in the scope of our pension, but nice to know as background.

The government claims that the pension amount for a civil servant is too high. In reality when looking at other European countries, they are in line with a normal pension. The pensions of the normal employee and the independent workers are too low and should increase. If the government wants to be taken seriously on this subject, they need to give the right example. The only pensions in Belgium that could be seen as too high are the pensions of members of parliament, judges… Leading by example? Anyone?

Step 4: A new pension system based on a point system

For every year you work you will get points. If you work 100% and make an average wage, you will get 1 point. At the end of your career, if you worked 45 years (at the moment) and earned an average wage, you will have ‘earned’ 45 points. Then depending on factors like the financial situation of the Belgian State (government debt) and the Belgian life expectancy, these points will be converted into an amount. This system has been in force for 3 years in Germany and guess what? The pension amounts did not increase over time…

Conclusion

So the battle for a decent pension is still ongoing and at the moment things are not turning into our favor. The future will tell us how much the Belgian public will put up with and how much counterpressure we and the general public can put on our government to make them change their plans. We hope that we do not need an incident to prove our point.

Last but not least, I would like to explain again why we at BeCA are not a big fan of a recognition as a heavy profession. If pilots are recognized as a heavy profession this will have consequences on the pre-pension age. In 2017 this was 58. This means that if a Common Labor Agreement (CLA) would be signed within an airline company, the aviation sector or at national level, pilots could be forced out of the company from this age. This would cost the company around 700€ a month to replace an older captain (read:expensive in the higher pay-scales) with a fresh newly trained captain (read: cheaper pilot). Since we see the aviation industry being flooded with bean counters who do not see the overall bigger picture of our job, we believe this threat is real.

We already saw this process in 2011/2012 when some Belgian Companies forced their older pilots out of the company into a forced pension and offered them to be rehired as independent contractors.

Food for thought…

We will of course keep you posted on other developments in this topic!

Many happy landings!