VACC update

We wanted to share an update on what your Company Council has been working on and what’s coming up over the next couple of weeks. Our aim is to keep you informed, connected, and confident that your issues are being actively progressed.

Pilot survey

If you haven’t already, please click here to complete the pilot survey. It really matters. The feedback will directly help shape what the Company Council pushes for in the next scheduling and pay talks. The survey closes on Sunday 15 February at 2200, and we’d really appreciate your input.

FTA: downroute disruption and MBTR

The failure to agree (FTA) covering downroute disruption and MBTR couldn’t be resolved at Stage 1, so it has now been escalated to Stage 2. We are meeting with the company on Monday 9 February, and will keep you up to date with our progress.

Outstanding FTAs

On the 18 February we are meeting with VAA to discuss the outstanding FTAs and current issues raised by members. These include:

• A330 Miami operations
• 750-hour contract standby and SIM
• Leave stability days
• BTRT
• Contract roll out

We hope this will finally result in tangible solutions to these long standing issues.

A330 variation

The CLA specifies that ‘7.7.3 Rule 4a variation will be monitored and jointly reviewed in Q1 2026 by the CLARG’. We have written to the company to formally request this review and have not yet received a date from them. We were surprised to hear in the flight ops update that this is being worked on and hope that means a date is imminent. Given the high number of A339s in operation it is patently unfair to expect pilots on the A330 to have to work longer than all others to receive any mitigations.

FDP working group

Work continues in the FDP working group. At the moment, the company’s position is mainly recognising protected reasons for absence, such as maternity. We believe more types of absence should be recognised and we don’t agree with some of the adjustments currently being proposed. Discussions are ongoing, with further work planned for next week.

FDP reconciliation

All pilots should now have received their personalised FDP reconciliation breakdown. If you haven’t, please let us know.

FCM published a list of what duties are being remunerated with the annual reconciliation and it’s hard to see from a logical or fairness perspective why some duties are paid and some are not. For instance, you could be rostered a block of five standby days, not get called and then receive an FDP. Or you could get called for a cover sim on the same block and still only receive one FDP. These two scenarios could also occur from standby being placed on your roster in the live environment if you were taken off a five day footprint trip and you would receive zero FDPs.

Through the FDP working group we are continually pushing for fairness and for all duties to be properly recognised.

Summer 2026 BTRT tables

We are disappointed and frustrated that the company has not shared the Summer 2026 BTRT tables ahead of the publication of the trip lists. This data has been known to the company for around six months and could have, and should have, have been shared much earlier.

While the published trip lists appear technically compliant with the agreement, the decision to return all Florida flying to two-pilot, one-night trips does nothing to support programme stability and instead increases risk to the robustness of the summer operation.

Virgin Atlantic prides itself on offering a premium product and delivering a high level of service to its passengers, yet this does not extend to the most basic area of customer need – two alert pilots at all times in charge of the aircraft. When it comes to crew complement we remain an industry outlier, both in comparison to the SkyTeam airlines and within the UK.

Inability to fly policy

We now have a copy of the policy schedule for the current income protection scheme. This is the first time this has been shared since its inception in 2019 and we’re appreciative of VAAs efforts to ensure we can have this much needed visibility. We will now review this to ascertain if what was previously balloted has been delivered, before we can move onto further discussions on the proposed new inability to fly benefit. We’ll update you as soon as we have more clarity.

Life assurance

In some cases, Fusion isn’t showing the correct amount of benefit provided for life assurance cover. The definition of ‘salary’ applied to pilots for life assurance is total pay (currently defined as current basic annual salary (prior to any salary sacrifice) and flying pay), plus the following qualification pay:

• Type Rate Examiner (TRE)
• Type Rating Instructor (TRI)
• Line Training Captains/HF Lead (LTC)
• Training First Officer (Non-TRI)

The amount displayed on the life assurance page in Fusion is not used to determine cover, in the event of a claim the People Team liaise directly with the insurer and calculate the amounts using the definition above.