Simple as Airbus – Newspaper Kommersant No. 232 (7433) dated 12/14/2022

According to Kommersant, Rossiya Airlines plans to send a third of its Airbus pilots to idle time every month. Trade unions consider this decision discriminatory, since the flight time on this type of vessel is the same as on Boeing, and after the start of flights to Dubai, it will increase altogether. At the same time, in Aeroflot, according to Kommersant’s interlocutors, pilots are not suspended from flights, but they fly on Boeing – and therefore earn – more. They see the reasons for the need for both carriers to save spare parts for European-made aircraft.

As it became known to Kommersant, the Rossiya airline will send about a third of the pilots of all its Airbus to idle – up to a hundred people. As indicated in the order of the deputy director for personnel management of the carrier dated December 6 (Kommersant has it), the decision was made in order to prevent mass layoffs, taking into account “emergency circumstances affecting the financial and economic activities of the airline.” A simple one is introduced from January 1 to March 31, a source in Rossiya told Kommersant and was confirmed in two trade unions. There are 31 different types of Boeing and 26 Airbus A320/A319 in the Rossiya fleet. Four of the Airbus are not flying, according to Flightradar24.

According to a Kommersant source in the airline, a third of the entire A319/320 flight crew will be temporarily suspended from work every month and transferred to two-thirds of the salary. According to other sources, we are talking about a weekly suspension of a third of the pilots.

At the same time, Kommersant’s interlocutor cites the planning center’s report: in December, the average Airbus flight time in Russia was comparable to Boeing’s flight time in the park – seven hours a day against eight. Whereas the raid in November SSJ 100 (74 aircraft) – 2.5 flight hours per month. For January, he says, the scheduled load on the Airbus schedule will increase.

Oksana Vlasenko, chairman of the Interregional Union of Pilots, confirmed to Kommersant that up to a third of Airbus pilots are idle. According to her, an Airbus pilot now averages about 50-70 hours per month, “which is normal by the standards of the autumn-winter season and slightly higher than the flight time of Boeing pilots.” The demurrage decision, according to Ms. Vlasenko, could be “discriminatory” as it only affects pilots of that type of vessel, despite the fact that “flights are comparable or lower.” Miroslav Boichuk, the president of the flight crew trade union, told Kommersant that he was also aware of the decision of the leadership of Rossiya, with which he continued negotiations on the cancellation of the order.

In “Russia” “Kommersant” said that due to sanctions restrictions on flights, as well as the low season, “there is a slight decrease in demand for air travel.”

“In order to preserve the workforce, a partial downtime for the flight crew of the A320 family aircraft has been introduced,” they said, specifying that flight attendants are not sent to downtime.

A source close to the airline’s management assures that “all pilots will alternately be idle for several days a month,” and Airbus pilots “are systematically retraining Airbus pilots on the SSJ 100 from 2020.”

Aeroflot assured Kommersant that it would not send pilots to idle. This was confirmed to Kommersant by Igor Deldyuzhov, president of the Sheremetyevo trade union of flight personnel. But the flight time, and, accordingly, the income of pilots on all types of Airbus for the airline, according to him, is “significantly lower” than for Boeing. He suggests that the situation may be related to the need to save resources on the aircraft of a European manufacturer: “Boeing, it may be easier to find spare parts.”

Interviewed by Kommersant, carriers, including S7 and Azur Air, said that, despite the low season, they do not plan to suspend the work of pilots. Smartavia added that, “on the contrary, they are recruiting pilots.”

The question “about the resources of a particular type of vessel does not depend on industry-wide trends, but on the strategies of each individual carrier,” says Fyodor Borisov, an expert at the Institute of Transport Economics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Svetlana Krasnyanskaya, head of the HR service of the Yakovlev & Partners legal group, recalls that an employee has the right to challenge the temporary suspension of work in the labor inspectorate, the prosecutor’s office or in court. Sotheby’s partner Anton Krasnikov notes that the procedure for introducing downtime has not been regulated in detail by law.

Aigul Abdullina