CAL’s pilots are wrong, wrong, wrong

THE EDITOR: There is nothing any pilot or anyone affiliated with the TTALPA (TT Airline Pilots Association) can say to convince me, or any right-thinking TT citizen, that Sunday’s "sick-out," which shut down the airline for 24 hours and disrupted the lives thousands of passengers, internationally, was anything other than selfish, outrageous and illegal.

The pilots’ actions were obviously premeditated (scores of pilots don’t all report sick three hours before flight time by chance) and orchestrated to have maximum disruptive effect: it was Great Race weekend in Tobago, when all airbridge flights were fully-booked; mid-August, CAL’s busiest period, with students returning to school abroad, and hundreds of Trinis coming back home from vacation. Their actions were heartless, vindictive and illegal.

Pilots are very well paid. Their salaries range from $25,000 a month for junior pilots to $100,000 for the veterans. I am not saying they don’t have a right to negotiate for more money, but shutting down the company cannot be an option. There is a process for negotiations, negotiate.

The pilots’ actions put untold pressure on CAL’s lowest paid customer-facing staff who, we can be sure, got more cuss than one can imagine. And I agree with Minister Stuart Young, the pilots believe that they are “entitled.”

And Opposition MP Roodal Moonilal is trying to politicise and justify behaviour that was patently illegal. My advice to him: hush.

Interestingly, all the comments and online posts from the “disgruntled” pilots are anonymous. If they are bold enough to "sick-out," and leave people stranded all over the place, and set up their colleagues for cuss, why are their not bold enough to stand up and speak out publicly? Why? Because they know they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

The national airline survives on a government subsidy, it is highly indebted, staff had to be furloughed during covid19 and the pandemic caused CAL to lay-off staff. The airline is now trying to recover. It has launched a marketing campaign to attract more of the diaspora to use CAL to “Come Home.”

The pilots want that money. They are too wicked and bad.

ALLISON CHANG

via e-mail