Open Skies?
 

Any off the top info on BA's new brother?

Check out the website....

Bad pay, got to pay for your type and be JAA licensed with the right to live in the EU.

I'm hoping the BA guys put a stop to this $hit pronto..

Check out PPrune.com for information about Open Skies

Once I saw pay for your type; I saw myself stop reading and went away pronto. But at the end saw a bonding agreement, what's that about? If it's a SSTR there should be no bond. Captjns; I saw the pprune thing and typically saw the I Hate flying speel that makes me shy away from it.

I stopped at the pay, absolutely abysmal for a 757 job. Bonding I could probably get my head around. But Self-Sponsored and bonded, who the hell are they trying to kid.

On a side note, I was heading back to PHL from BGR today and heard an Openskies call sign talking to Bos Ctr. I didn't think they could start flying until they had the go-ahead from the BA pilots??!! Funny thing though, it wasn't a Euro or even British accent on the radio.

Wikipedia has their call sign as Mistral. So it intrigues me to know who this Openskies is?

Did it sound like a Russian accent? I dunno, maybe a Tu-154 flying out of Wright Pat, but just a guess, of course;)

It's bad, bad news.

From the ALPA newsline:

On Thursday, June 19, OpenSkies, British Airways’ alter-ego airline, will launch its first flight. The OpenSkies flight, from Paris-Orly to New York John F. Kennedy Int’l, will use BA aircraft and the BA brand, but will not be using BA pilots.

OpenSkies is the first alter-ego challenge for European pilots following the first-stage US/EU Open Skies agreement. The fact that OpenSkies is flying without BA pilots means that the hard-earned benefits contractually negotiated by those who have invested the most in their airline—its pilots—could be lost.

The British Airways Airline Pilots Association (BALPA), which voted overwhelmingly for industrial action over this issue in February, has announced that it is seeking to change EU law to clarify that Article 43 of the Treaty of Rome cannot be used by British Airways to prevent its pilots from taking industrial action—including the possibility of going on strike.

In June of this year, ALPA pilots conducted informational picketing at international airports in the U.S. to show their support for their brothers and sisters across the Atlantic. ALPA is fully engaged in participating in the Second Stage talks between the European Union and the United States.

Just to clarify, BA management is claiming that Article 43 of the Open Skies agreement prohibits the BA pilots from taking any industrial action (i.e. a strike) regardless of whether or not there is a violation of their Collective Bargaining agreement by the new Alter Ego airline OpenSkies. The implications are huge- and go far beyond our profession to threaten all organized labor in the EU.

Should the BA pilots be successful in their appeal on Article 43, then OpenSkies flying would likely be declared struck work. In short- I wouldn't touch this place with a 10-foot career-ending pole.

Soup

Looks like Openskies is a callsign for OPEN SKIES CONSULTATIVE COMMISSION (OSCC), here's a lnk to their website. http://www.osce.org/item/13516.html

And here's where I found the callsign
http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraff.../CNT/3-2-O.htm