Senior BA crew ‘face 55% pay cut’ as more than 47,000 passengers await refunds 

Senior British Airways cabin crew are facing a staggering 55 per cent pay cut with salaries slashed to £24,000 in yet another blow to the airline industry. 

Airline bosses wrote to employees outlining the new salaries after sacking 12,000 staff and ripping up contracts, The Sun reported.

One employee slammed the cost-cutting measure and said: ‘We are appalled’.

The news comes as almost 50,000 British Airways customers are still owed refunds despite the airline suspending most flights in March.

Cabin crew numbers will be nearly halved from 1,860 to 971 and main crew numbers have been cut from 12,402 to 8,591 as the airline grapples to stay afloat amid strict travel restrictions. 

Willie Walsh, boss of its Spanish parent company, has also revealed that 921,000 tickets for 2.1million flights were refunded in cash – but 346,000 customers accepted a credit voucher for a future flight.    

But there are still 47,400 people who are yet to see their money two months after the coronavirus crisis began. 

Thousands of British holidaymakers are owed up to £7billion for trips cancelled because of the global coronavirus pandemic with banks and airlines accused of flouting the law by refusing refunds.

There is growing anger that the Government has not intervened when lenders and travel firms are illegally withholding cash that should be paid within a week for flights and 14 days for package deals.

It came as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps defended the proposed two-week quarantine for people arriving in the UK and said: ‘It seems fair and right that if we are asking the British people to stay at home and make such huge sacrifices in their own lives, then we would expect anybody coming back to the country to do the same thing’.

The Competition and Markets Authority has revealed that four out of five complaints it is getting every day is from British consumers being denied travel refunds and the UK watchdog will soon announce a new crackdown.    

Airlines including BA, easyJet, Jet2, Virgin Atlantic, Ryanair and TUI have been accused of effectively breaking the law by pushing customers to accept credit-note vouchers which have little consumer protection and could prove worthless if a carrier went bust.  

Willie Walsh has also confirmed 12,000 job cuts at the airline will still go ahead despite the Government extending its furlough scheme until the end of October.

IAG’s chief executive Willie Walsh told MPs on Monday, before the extension announcement by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, that he was not ‘picking on’ British Airways.

Instead, he explained, the timing of the decision was due to the UK’s labour laws, which mean staff must be given a 45-day consultation period ahead of any redundancies.

But Mr Walsh’s IAG, which also owns airlines including Iberia and Aer Lingus, said on Wednesday the redundancy consultation will continue, after he was asked to put it on hold.

He wrote: ‘I was pleased to see the announcement by the Chancellor that the CJRS (furlough scheme) is being extended.

‘We commend the Chancellor for his decision and applaud his efforts to breathe some life into a dying economy.

‘His actions will provide some additional relief to our people and our business.

‘However, we must act now to secure the maximum number of jobs possible, consistent with the reality of a structurally changed airline industry in a severely weakened global economy.

‘I want to confirm therefore that we will not pause our consultations or put our plans on hold.’

On Monday in evidence to the Transport Committee, he said the redundancies were at BA because ‘the labour legislation in Ireland and Spain – the two other major countries in which we operate – it’s different. We’re required to do it in a different way’.

Committee chairman Huw Merriman said that while it is clear the aviation sector ‘is on its knees right now’, the extension of the Government’s furlough scheme until October would allow BA employees to keep their jobs despite most flights being grounded.

Airbus and Tui are set to slash thousands of jobs as planes around the world are grounded.

In a further sign of the damage the coronavirus outbreak is doing to business, aircraft maker Airbus stands ready to axe more than 10,000 staff, possibly within days.

And tour operator Tui warned that up to 8,000 jobs will go at its business following the dramatic collapse in air travel and holiday bookings.

The prospect adds to the misery sweeping travel, aviation and aerospace. Plane maker Boeing is cutting 16,000 jobs while 12,000 staff face the axe at British Airways, 3,000 at Virgin Atlantic and 3,000 at Ryanair.