Cargolux Board

in our last COVID-19 update regarding in-room confinement, we mentioned the necessity to approach the authorities at various destinations to improve the situations we as pilots have to cope with while on a layover. According to Senior Management this would be done via the air operator committees at certain destinations.

In addition to that, we urged management to put more emphasis in trying to alleviate the situation for pilots on layovers where severe restrictions and other issues like e.g. difficult access to food or hotels not meeting the agreed standards are evolving. 

Please click here to read the latest letter to the CEO and EVP Flight Operations, that was sent on Friday, 28 August 2020.

To get an overview of how many colleagues have already been scheduled for a layover at destinations where in-room confinement is or was required and whether or not these layovers are equally spread amongst the pilot community, we kindly ask you to complete the following short survey. This data will be used in the next COVID-19 meeting with Senior Management.

Click on the button below or follow this link to access the “In-room Confinement” survey.

Thank you for submitting it until latest Thursday, 3 September 2020!

During the last couple of weeks, we have been progressively faced with the requirement of in-room confinement at some destinations. 
 
These restrictions were introduced by local authorities with the aim to reduce the risk of “importing” the virus into their countries and by no means take into account the nature of the business of the airlines, their location nor their internal protocols – should there be any – to protect their own staff from getting an infection. 
 
There is no doubt that those do not only constitute a significant cutback of personal rights, but also can have a detrimental effect on pilot’s health. While at the beginning it could be assumed that these conditions would only be in place occasionally and time limited, with again increasing coronavirus cases worldwide, there is a real risk that we as pilots could be faced with these restrictions literally for an entire trip for many more months to come, as more authorities could introduce similar restrictions. 
 
In the regular COVID-19 meetings with senior management these and other concerns have been brought up repeatedly since the onset of the pandemic, in order to ultimately find solutions to improve the current situation. Unfortunately, this involves authorities of different countries, who are the main stake holders and decision makers here.
 
Rest assured, that we as your representatives are not simply accepting the in-room confinement of our members.
 
Please click here to read the last letter concerning in-room confinement that was sent to the CEO on 17 August 2020. Previously sent letters and replies received regarding the same subject can be found here.

Yesterday you have received an email from the Chief Pilots Office, announcing the start of the vacation bidding for the year 2021. With this email, we would like to explain one big change in the “Two Step Vacation Bidding System” concerning the V-Day bidding and allocation process.

Based on the result of the V-Day (formerly VOFF) Survey in December 2019 and to reestablish their original purpose, the bidding and allocation process for the V-Days as part of the “Two Step Vacation Bidding System” was amended in order to increase the individual success rate. Please click here to read the Letter of Intent (LOI), that was signed on 18 June 2020.

The History of the V-Days
Before digging deeper into explaining what has been changed, a brief reminder about the history of the VOFF days, which are now referred to as V-Days; 

The VOFF days were originally introduced in 2006. Once allocated they replaced the block of CODays in that roster period. With the Off- Day scheme that was introduced in January 2020, the VOFF days have been re-labeled V-Days and replace, once allocated, the A-Days in that roster period (calendar month).

Why was a change needed?
An increase of the individual success rate is especially important for colleagues with lower seniority during the highly requested vacation periods, because this bidding possibility should enable them to combine a probable low number of vacation days with V-Days in order to get a relatively decent guaranteed block of days off for possible vacation planning.

What has been changed?

• The revised allocation process for V-Days remains seniority based.

• Every pilot will be able to submit up to 8 requests, listed according to priority, including a preference, whether the V-Days should be located before or after the respective vacation period. 

• Each pilot is entitled to have a maximum of 3 V-Day blocks per calendar year allocated.

• With the previous allocation process all requests for one pilot were processed (and eventually allocated) before moving to the pilot with the next lower seniority. With the revised allocation process, the request with the highest priority for one pilot will be processed (and eventually allocated) before moving to the pilot with the next lower seniority, processing this pilot’s requests. The aim is that every pilot gets one request granted before the next pilot in line gets his/her request and so on. Once the requests of all pilots have been processed, allocation starts again from the top of the seniority list. Follow this link to a flow chart illustrating the process.
  With this method a fairer distribution should be possible, where colleagues with a higher seniority are most likely getting a larger number of vacation days during the peak times anyhow and colleagues with a lower seniority are now more likely able to get V-Days during the peak times.

• Additionally, every pilot can now specify for which vacation period the “split & wrap” option of V-Days is valid for. The approval to split the block of V-Days and attach them before and after a block of vacation days can increase the chance of getting the days close to the targeted period. 

If you have any questions regarding the V-Day bidding and allocation process, please feel free to contact us at cvboard@alpl.lu.

Please click on the following links to download the ALPL Vacation Calendar 2021 and 2022.

Luxair´s sudden cancellation of the staff travel agreement for Cargolux employees a couple weeks ago came as a surprise to all of us. After having lost all travel benefits on our own airplanes this development was rather a big setback for many of our members, especially for those who are dependent on Luxair ID tickets for commuting to and from work.
 
Meanwhile we have been informed by our CEO that Luxair proposed a new staff travel agreement to Cargolux, which covers both business travel and private travel for Cargolux staff. 
 
On 28 July 2020 the CEO requested the feedback from the Delegation to Luxair’s proposal regarding private travel. This proposal contains an increase of approximately 80% for the cost of a one-way ID staff ticket, which would be – more or less – in line with the revised travel-agreement implemented by Luxair for their own staff. 
 
After due consideration (lack of alternatives, flexible and cheaper ID tickets versus inflexible and expensive full fare tickets, the urgency of a timely reintroduction of the staff travel agreement, the risk of losing all travel benefits) the Delegation advised management in a letter dated 29 July 2020 to accept the proposal from Luxair. Nevertheless, a possibility to renegotiate the travel agreement after the COVID 19 crisis was mentioned in this letter. You can find the Delegation’s feedback following this link.
 
It was only in the CEO’s response to the Delegation’s feedback, that we learned, that Luxair’s proposal covers also “other business travel” Cargolux undertakes with Luxair and that “Cargolux will be looking at the overall package to the business in deciding if it represents value to the company or not.“
 
On Saturday, 08 August 2020, the CEO informed the Delegation that he approached Luxair with “a request for an improved offer for private travel for our employees but have not heard anything to date” and that he was still waiting for a response. 
 
We will keep you informed about any developments.

The Know Your CWA page has been updated by adding information regarding Delayed Reporting.

Click here or on the ‘CWA’ menu item to access this page.

On Friday, 17 July 2020, we again discussed the cancellation of the Staff Travel Agreement for Cargolux staff with the CEO. We stressed that this is a pressing issue for many of our members, which requires urgent attention. 

The CEO assured that he is aware of the impact caused by this cancellation. Unfortunately, to this date Cargolux has not received any feedback from Luxair on this issue yet.

For the time being, raising this topic whenever possible is all we as your Board can do to get this agreement reinstated. As stated before, this will mostly be at the discretion of Luxair.

As explained before, the government has asked for a meeting between the Unions, Luxair, Cargolux, Luxairport and government representatives, also referred to as “Tripartite pour le secteur de l ´aviation”. The meeting is now scheduled to take place in the morning of 14 July 2020.
 
At this point it is still unclear what the government’s agenda items are but considering the general economic situation of the global aviation industry we realize that we are not immune against those challenges and that our fortunate situation working for a cargo airline could be jeopardized.
 
It must be noted, that only the extraordinary dedication and commitment of its pilots, who often accept considerable personal sacrifices, allowed Cargolux to play a significant role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and to achieve the results of the past few months. 
 
Cargolux benefited from the increased demand for airfreight capacity in recent months. However, in light of the global economic crisis this could change any time and we could face similar problems as we see in many other airlines including Luxair. Considering this and how Luxair and Cargolux are interconnected, we must not neglect the fact, that changes within Luxembourg’s airline industry may be required, which in consequence could also have a negative impact on Cargolux.
 
In order to show the commitment of the Cargolux pilots and that their extraordinary dedication during the crisis shall not be forgotten by the government and the airline – when the future of Luxembourg’s aviation sector will be discussed in the Tripartite – the LCGB asks all Cargolux Pilots members to join the 
 

Rallye for the future – United for the future
of Luxembourg’s aviation sector!
 
14 July 2020
08.00 h
 
In front of the
 
Ministère de la Mobilité et des Travaux publics

4, Place de l’Europe
L-1499 Luxembourg

As much as anyone else, we were surprised to learn that Luxair decided to cancel the Staff Travel Agreement for Cargolux staff without any prior notice or indication that this may happen. This agreement was effectively the only staff rate agreement which many of our members relied on to commute to/from Luxembourg and we as your Board are very well aware about the consequences of this cancellation.

Immediately after we received the email from Corporate Communication, we did get in touch with the CEO. He advised us that Luxair did not provide Cargolux management with any prior notification about the cancellation nor did he receive a courtesy call before. 

In this telephone conversation we also made it clear again, that this cancellation has huge consequences for many Cargolux pilots who rely on the agreement. The CEO assured that he is aware about this fact and explained that he will investigate about the reasons why Luxair cancelled this contract.

Unfortunately, for the time being this is all we as your Board can do. As your representatives we will do whatever we can to get this agreement reinstated. However, please note that this will for the most part be at the discretion of Luxair.

Please find below an update in regard to:

• Pilot Representatives – Management Meetings
• New CWA FTL Provisions

Pilot Representatives – Management Meetings
With this members update we would like to inform you and explain how we as Pilot Representatives see and saw the collaboration between Cargolux management and us during the current COVID-19 crisis.

There are regular meetings taking place between the Pilot Representatives and Senior Management. The priority aim of these meetings, which happened until now at least once per week, is to communicate – according to the feedback from the members – and mitigate the risks for the flight crews/staff related to COVID-19. 

There are, however, secondary impacts of the crisis that impair our daily work life as pilots like freedom of movement at certain stations, nutrition and comfort at destinations, where we take our rest. These items are partially defined and taken care of in the provisions of our CWA, but unfortunately we have been faced with a number of violations of our CWA defined standards and internal policies, which almost all being related to the hotels we take our rest in.

While we as Pilot Representatives also RESPONSIBLY offer solutions to mitigate these secondary effects, we unfortunately perceive Senior Management to be overly hesitating, apparently because of cost reasons. We managed to convince management of certain measures to improve both safety and comfort, like allocation of suites during layovers in SIN and BKK for example, but the efforts necessary to convince our social partner remain unnecessarily high.

To summarize, we find Senior Management approachable in terms of health and security measures, but too reluctant when it comes to making sure that the provisions of the CWA and internal policies are respected in light of the crisis.

Unilateral decisions, particularly when short notice changing the hotels in COVID-19 or unrest hotspots, e.g. in HKG or the US, ignoring the respective policies and standards, not consulting the hotel committee turned out to be detrimental to our organization causing delays and therefore having a negative financial impact.

Despite those aggravating facts and after several discussions, the Board decided to continue the constructive approach dealing with management. Please rest assured that this does not mean that the difficult conditions down route are simply accepted from our side or your feedback is ignored. 

We encourage management to be cooperative not falling for the trap of trying to perform cost cutting over a pilot community that voluntarily goes the extra mile. Strangling that momentum by turning a blind eye on our rights is something that the ALPL Board does not approve and cannot ignore.

New CWA FTL Provisions
As of 01July 2020 new CWA provisions covering flight time limitations for Standard and Augmented Crew operation came into effect. With the aforementioned management attitude to disrespect our rights on occasions, we might be faced with attempted non compliances in regard to these new FTL rules.

We have started to send out updated versions of the „Know your CWA“ series. This is done in order to support you to familiarize yourself with the new FTLs and to allow you to enforce the correct applications of the new rules.

As it was very hard to achieve the new FTLs to mitigate adverse effects of fatigue we would like to ask you to familiarize yourself with the changes and to politely but firmly insist in the application of those rules. Remember, it will depend on us as individuals being part of the Cargolux pilot community to ensure, that these new rules are followed.

Notwithstanding of the above, we would like to emphasize that neither EASA nor the CWA alone can completely avoid fatigue. Therefore we URGE EVERY pilot to file a fatigue report if fatigue was a factor on any FDP. This is the only tool to get real time fatigue data in combination with planned FDPs and to identify new hotspots!

If you have any questions regarding the new FTLs please don’t hesitate to contact your ALPL Board via mail at cvboard@alpl.lu for clarification.

As we also experienced that your voyage reports make a difference we would also like to further encourage you to thoroughly assess your ability to perform a flight duty when faced with unacceptable standards during your rest period, file the respective reports on those deficiencies and send a copy of the report to cvhotels@alpl.lu

Fly safe, stay healthy.