Dear members,

This new edition of our magazine presents the latest updates on the activities undertaken by your association: Peer Support Programs (p. 16), Cosmic Radiation (p. 22), Per diems (p. 7), Drones (p. 12), among others. All these important subjects have two things in common: they concern the whole pilot community of our country and they often require long and in-depth work before we can notice concrete achievements. That’s why our BeCA representatives commit themselves every day.

We realised that in order to achieve one of our main missions, i.e. ensure the best pilot representation by increasing BeCA’s influence, we must reinforce our coordination with the pilots’ union representatives in airlines, on all industrial and safety issues that impact pilots. The appropriate platform for that is BeCA’s Industrial Working Group (IND WG), which was kicked off during a meeting on 16-17 October. It is composed of all BeCA members with a union representative mandate from all airlines based in Belgium, in order to share their expertise and experiences. This new structure will complete the role of our category VPs and improve the communication between BeCA active members and these pilot representatives.

Although local specificities airlines by airlines will always exist, in most cases, a lot of energy could be saved and an overall better outcome could be achieved by reinforcing centralization of information and knowledge. Besides, BeCA benefits also from a large national, European and global network which allows us to always get first-hand information on everything that impacts pilots.

You’ll find in this edition a detailed presentation of this new structure of coordination (p. 4), the BeCA Industrial Working Group.

I take this opportunity to remind you that the social elections will take place in May 2020 (p. 6). It will be an important milestone to achieve this target by revitalizing the pilot delegations in airlines. Together, let’s not miss this important opportunity!

Capt. Alain Vanalderweireldt, BeCA President