For several weeks, crews of passenger airlines have been forced into temporary unemployment. The restart of operations is now approaching, but it will probably take several years before production reaches its pre-corona crisis level. Airlines decided to reduce their fleets and some of them already announced collective dismissals.
Speculations on who should be dismissed and who should stay have started, raising sometimes anger among the pilot community. Some could advocate dismissing the older pilots who are already entitled to retirement, others the younger pilots who were last to join the company. But bear in mind that according to collective dismissal regulations, every pilot, whatever his/her age, position or seniority, might lose his/her job. Given the global crisis, finding a new job, even on the other side of the world, might take months or years.
BeCA, as a professional association, is therefore strongly encouraging the pilot community to share the reduced number of flights among all the pilots of the company by promoting part-time for a limited period of time. Some might argue that all pilots might be strongly impacted, but this is nothing compared to the drama of losing your job and the financial burden of maintaining your licence and rating valid.
With the assistance of the government, this part-time measure will be cost-neutral for the airlines. They will retain their qualified and experienced pilots for the day the market regains the expected levels and huge savings will be made by avoiding severance pay to the dismissed pilots.