Paris - Airline pilots are generally regarded as cool, calm and collected and high-flying earners in every sense.
But as costs are cut to the bone, those at the helm are under increasing pressure to make ends meet.
For 18 months, Erik Fengler co-piloted a Boeing 737 for Irish budget carrier Ryanair around Europe. In a good month he says he could make about e5 000 (R48 000), much less than his peers in flagship carriers like Lufthansa, but he only earned if he actually left the ground – on a so-called zero-hours basis.
Often there was no work for him, let alone sick pay or paid holiday, because officially he was self-employed. As with many pilots with budget airlines, his services were contracted out by an intermediary firm each time he flew. And it’s all perfectly legal, although relentless earnings anxieties cannot be good for a someone flying an aircraft packed with passengers.
The low-fare carriers are the key drivers of the “unfair competition from the inside,” believes Dirk Polloczek, president of the European Cockpit Association (ECA). “Airlines are constantly reinventing models to get cheaper labour, like hiring self-employed or fake self-employed pilots, pilots on temporary work agency contracts, or on zero-hours contracts,” Polloczek told the Flightglobal aviation news website.
Last year, in a survey of 6 633 European pilots conducted by Ghent University, 16 percent said they were working under non-standard or atypical employment terms.This is especially prevalent in budget airlines Ryanair, Norwegian and Wizz Air.
However, the latter Hungarian operator denied it uses zero-hours contracts, as claimed by pilots, or the still more controversial pay-to-fly (P2F) arrangement.
Under this scheme, qualified but inexperienced pilots actually pay the employer to get flying time on Asian routes that will look good on their CVs. The ECA cites the example of the Florida-based EagleJet, which offers European pilots this opportunity for e87 500.
In the future, young pilots are expected to find jobs almost exclusively with low-fare airlines and will have increasingly insecure employment terms, according to the association. But governments are still doing nothing about it, the ECA says, noting the urgent need for unified employment regulations in European air travel.
Norwegian airline is particularly “inventive” in cost-cutting and social terms and tax optimisation, says Robert Hengster, aviation representative at the Berlin-based Verdi transport workers’ union.
For its planned flights to the US, the Norwegian company founded an entity in Ireland, which leases Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets to the parent company and recruits staff in Asia on local terms. Its Irish licensing is still only temporary and US authorities are worried about granting the carrier landing rights on such a basis.
“Decisions are made at airline headquarters and no longer in the cockpit,” says James Phillips, international affairs director of the German Pilots Association, a captain himself.
As a rule, the pilots should have the last word in matters of safety. But nearly half of those canvassed in the Ghent University survey say they cannot deviate from company instructions.
Phillips recalls the case of one pilot who was sacked after he wanted to inspect suspect cargo in his hold. When the freight company refused to open the crates, he had them unloaded, a conscientious precaution on his part that cost him his job.
Airline employment terms and screening procedures came under scrutiny after German-wings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, a 27-year-old with a history of depression, is believed to have deliberately crashed a passenger plane into the French Alps in March, killing 149 people and himself.
The next development in aviation practices, the ECA’s Polloczek warns, could be the flagging, or registering, of individual aircraft in countries with low employment standards. This is already common practice in the shipping industry to reduce operating costs.
dpa