Background

FedEx launched its €4.4 billion bid for TNT Express on 7 April 2015. After the 2012 UPS trial, this date sounded again like the starting point of an uncertainty period for TNT Airways pilots. Should the deal be confirmed, TNT Airways has to be divested and step out of TNT Express to respect European ownership and effective control “protection” law.

Facts

• TNT Airways will remain a Belgian Company based in Liège with a Belgian AOC.
• The name TNT Airways will disappear.
• TNT Express and FedEx should compare their business to create synergies. This cannot be done before the merge as they are still competitors and it takes time.
• As a consequence, everything will remain as is for 2016.
• TNT Express and FedEx clearly stated in the merger protocol that intercontinental freight will be moved to CDG on their own aircraft. This means 60% of the freight uplifted by our long-haul fleet will vanish. It is unlikely that our Middle East contracts (if extended) would fill four 747s and three 777s and we don’t know if the future owner would bring business to fill the remaining block space.
• When you will be reading these lines the name of the new owner of TNT Airways will probably have been announced during an extraordinary company council but for the time being we still don’t know who are the candidates TNT Express and FedEx are negotiating with.
• A public statement was supposed to announce that TNT Airways will be the preferred service provider for FedEx in Europe but nothing was released so far so this information is still considered hypothetical.
• As service provider, TNT Airways should get a service contract but we don’t know if it is short, medium or long term.

What we want

As pilots, we are trained to take decisions. We do so every day on the line, and every once in a while, we face tough decisions. We, as TNT Airways pilots’ representatives, are facing a very tough situation, with many changing parameters and a tight deadline. To make the best decision, we basically applied the same principles as in the plane: we gathered information, imagined possible scenarios, identified risks and tried to find solutions.

Our final objective is to ensure the current level of employment for a determined critical transition period. For this, the only solution was to sign a tailor made CLA with the consent of FedEx, TNT Express, and TNT Airways before the sale.

After many weeks of discussions and 2 general assemblies (where 99% of the employees were convinced such a CLA made sense and 87% were ready for action to make it happen), we were informed that FedEx and TNT Express finally fully support TNT Airways management to negotiate and finalise it quickly.

On 17 December, we signed together with the management and the permanent secretaries the final version of the CLA. This is a great achievement to the benefit of all TNT Airways employees and pilots.

This is only the beginning and we will of course continue to monitor carefully the sale process but we believe this CLA is a very good safety net that will allow us to move forward and enter 2016 with more serenity.

This experience has revealed that a close cooperation and teamwork amongst Belgian Airlines unions and BeCA is a very efficient way to achieve great success at local level.

We will keep you posted. Should you have question/comment/concern, please feel free to contact us or your union representatives.

Have a happy and healthy New Year.

Rémi Thirion, Vice-President TNT Airways