Please find below an update regarding:
- Salary increase in August 2021
- Reply letters from Management
- PVG Rotations
- Vacation Bidding 2022
Salary increase in August 2021
We would like to inform you that as per the CWA 2020-2022 Art. 38.1., the salaries for all pilots will be increased by 2% as of 1 August 2021. The new salary should be displayed on your monthly pay slip for August 2021 and can be crosschecked with the tables in the CWA.
Reply letters from Management
A few months ago, we sent some letters to Management concerning certain developments that have been observed by our members and were mentioned in our June 2021 Members Update. We have recently received two reply letters concerning the following:
- Recurrent Extended Rest Recovery Period (RERRP) in BKK
Some members informed us, that their RERRP was scheduled in BKK, a destination with in-room confinement requirement. It is our position that RERRPs at destinations with in-room confinement are not suitable to recover from a series of duties. Please click on below links to read again the letter that was sent from our side and the reply from Management. In the reply letter numerous attempts of crew control to schedule crews for a RERRP in BKK were not acknowledged. Some were successfully avoided due to the individual crew members intervention, therefore we encourage you to challenge the allocation of RERRP in BKK particularly in regards to the below written subject and letter about the PVG rotations.
Letter sent to management
Reply letter concerning RERRP in BKK
- Triplist in PBS
For obvious reasons the triplist in PBS was removed last year when the COVID pandemic started and the option to bid for trips was suspended. In the meantime, however, the network seems to be more stable, and we see an increased number of repetitive trips. Therefore, a letter to the VP Flight Operations was sent by the Delegation with the request to reintroduce the option to bid for trips in the PBS. Please click on below links to read again the letter that was sent from our side and the reply from Management.
Letter sent to management
Reply letter concerning triplist in PBS
PVG Rotations
After the announcement by CPO that the PVG flights will be conducted via BKK, the Pilot Representatives met with ExCom and CPO in order to discuss the current situation.
The CEO informed us, that due to the current Covid procedures in China, a lot of manpower is lost at the airports, so that the ground times increase considerably due to the fact there is much more time required to on- and off-load the aircraft. In fact, ground times of 11 hours and more have been observed recently and it was stated that currently it is impossible to predict turnaround times at PVG.
As PVG is affected the most by the Covid restrictions in China, it was decided by management to fly to PVG from BKK as announced by the CPO in order to be able to finish the FDPs within the limits. Unfortunately, all other airports outside China and relatively in the vicinity of PVG have either no capacity to deal with extra Cargolux flights, are too far away to stay within the max FDP due to extended ground time in PVG or have too stringent layover restrictions. Some rotations into PVG have been cancelled altogether so that Cargolux is able to continue operations efficiently into PVG.
We communicated our concerns regarding additional layovers in in-room confinement and sent a letter to CPO, where we stipulated strict, transparent scheduling rules regarding the layovers in BKK and the shuttle flights. You can read the letter here.
It was reiterated by management that it is not the intention of the company to have such rotations appear in our operation. Unfortunately, such restrictions are completely outside the control of Cargolux.
Vacation bidding 2022
On 19th August 2021, the two-step vacation bidding process for the year 2022 has started.
To optimize the result of the vacation bidding we would like to remind you of a few points which are important in this context.
- Vacation planning is an automatic process, and the result is heavily influenced by the input of the individual pilot.
- Especially during popular holiday periods, the rush after limited vacation slots is the greatest, which may affect even pilots with a relatively high seniority.
To increase your individual success rate, we recommend considering the following when placing your bids.
- Be aware of your relative seniority and request your vacation days accordingly.
- Rather than only requesting the minimum number of blocks for vacation, also place alternative bids.
- Rather than requesting a vacation block to start on a specific day, indicate a time window when the vacation should start. The system then can shift and trim your request to fit it in the available slots in that period.
- When placing your bids for vacation, do not count on getting your A or B Days allocated attached to a block of vacation days during the year when doing the regular monthly preferential bidding. There is no privilege and guarantee to get this request awarded just because of your vacation days. If there are no slots for off days available in respect to your seniority, the risk is high that you will not get them. It could even happen that a short block of vacation days could be used to cover rest requirements.
