Pilots join cabin crew

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 6

Pilots join cabin crew

N'ZPA staff correspondent London Passengers on British Airways charter flights next week will be served theirdrinks, meals, and duty-free goods by co-pilots and first officers who do not have aircraft to fly. They will be. the most junior members of the cabin crew — with no chance of promotion — but they will be on an average salary of more than 5NZ32.000 a year. They will be ahle to make up to about $l3B a month extra in commission on bar sales.

The normal starting salary for a junior cabin steward is $10,350.

The 23 co-pilots and first officers, who have found themselves out of jobs in the

cockpit due to the phasing out of the VCIO and a drop in passenger traffic, are completing a two-week training course on how to serve food and drinks and deal with passengers’ problems, i They will start work on charter flights run by British Airtours, a British Airways subsidiary. The men are the first to be redeployed as cabin crew from about 200 pilots who have been left with no aircraft to fly. “They have elected to work as the most junior members of the cabin crew with no chance of promotion,” a British Airways spokeswoman said. “But they will probably all be back flying again eventually.” The pilots will give up the

•extra gold braid on their uniforms for the same insignia as junior stewards. Some British Airtours cabin crew have objected to the pilots working with them and at first decided not to accept them in the new jobs. There was a split vote on a move to take industrial action and the retraining programme for the pilots went ahead.

Cabin crews complain that they, and not the pilots, have had to bear the brunt of British Airways redundancies.

Some first officers still in the cockpit are reported to be angry that their colleagues working as stewards will make more money with the bar commission they get on the charter flights.