Please find below an update in regard to:
- COVID – 19 Vaccination
- New crew room facilities and crew parking
- V-Day Survey
COVID – 19 Vaccination
In the recent Joint Delegation Meeting with Senior Management on 03 February 2021 the vaccination plan published by the Luxembourg government was discussed. This plan is based on recommendations by an Ethics Committee and currently foresees 6 phases.
According to that plan, Cargolux employees would only fall into phases 5 and 6, similar to other European countries. At the moment the law also only foresees to vaccinate people residing in Luxembourg with the exemption of employees working in the health care sector.
Furthermore, this vaccination plan doesn’t mention “essential workers”. In that meeting it was confirmed by Senior Management, that Cargolux employees should be considered as “essential workers” due to an increased exposure and that Management would continue to lobby the Ministry of Health to become a priority.
At the same time, Management mentioned that any offered vaccination would be on a voluntary basis and that there is no legal ground to force employees to get vaccinated anyway.
However, should there be additional restrictions by foreign governments in regard to entry requirements for crews, e.g. a mandatory vaccination, Management will get in touch with us.
New crew room facilities and crew parking
In the same meeting we also received a brief update on the new crew room facilities at the airport.
The facilities will be located inside the terminal building on the first floor facing the check in counters. It will consist of 2 rooms; 1 for check in and flight preparation, the other one will serve as a lounge area. There will also be a small changing room but unfortunately, due to limited space available, no storage room for luggage will be available.
Parking space will be offered at a newly built dedicated staff parking lot next to the terminal building during summer and underground parking during wintertime.
The briefing packages will still have to be picked up in the container at P7, mainly for maintenance reasons and more printers on site that could serve as back up printers.
Because of a delay by LuxAirport it will take most probably until the end of April until the facility will be available to the crews.
V-Day Survey
In December 2020 we asked you to complete a survey in regard to the bidding and allocation of V-Days for the year 2021 to find out whether the amended bidding and allocation procedure led to a better result than before.
Please click here to see the result of the V-Day Survey. Compared to the previous survey one year earlier we were able to identify the following amongst the participants:
- An increase of the average success rate, and
- An increasing success rate with decreasing seniority.
It is evident that the amended bidding and allocation process resulted in an improved success rate for pilots with lower seniority, which was the basic idea from the beginning. This is clearly depicted when looking at the trend lines 2020 and 2021 for Captains. The reason why the trend lines for First Officers are slightly different is due to the fact, that the average relative seniority of First Officers, who participated in the survey in their respective group was higher than the one of the Captains.
However, the bidding process and success rate for V-Days is closely linked to the vacation day bidding and hence depends on the number of allocated vacation days.
We are aware of these problems and as communicated already in our Members Update in November 2020, there is a common understanding between Flight Operations Management, Crew Planning and Pilot Representatives that the vacation day bidding and allocation process needs to be fine-tuned in order to increase the individual success rate and to reduce the outstanding vacation days in the future. A well functioning vacation bidding system should subsequently also lead to a further increased success rate for V-Days.
Please understand that changing a complex system like the vacation bidding could inevitably lead to profound changes that will influence every pilots work-life balance and therefore each step needs to be evaluated very carefully.
