(Adds detail)
LONDON/PARIS, April 29 (Reuters) - British Airways is
planning a major overhaul of its cabin crew that will
"significantly reduce" their numbers, an internal memo
circulated on Wednesday showed, after parent IAG moved
to cut as many as 12,000 of the airline's 42,000 staff.
Senior long-haul flight attendants stand to lose out as the
carrier scraps its three existing cabin-crew organisations and
reassigns a smaller number of staff to a single lower-cost
entity, under plans outlined in the memo seen by Reuters.
"Our proposals aim to save as many jobs as possible and
secure a sustainable future," the note from an in-flight
customer experience executive that was later circulated among
representatives of BA's 16,500 cabin crew said.
A BA spokeswoman declined to comment on the memo. Two union
sources told Reuters they were aware of its content.
The plans would abolish the "worldwide fleet" of mainly
senior crew that fly long-haul, as well as the medium-haul
"Euro fleet" and "mixed fleet" categories, it states.
BA has opened formal union consultations on a proposal to
"restructure and significantly reduce the size of our cabin crew
team in line with our anticipated operational requirement," the
memo says.
Those staying on would be grouped into a "single new cabin
crew team" based at London Heathrow, with "all crew flying both
short- and long-haul", it adds.
(Reporting by Josephine Mason and Laurence Frost; Additional
reporting by Sarah Young in London; Editing by Edmund Blair and
Alexander Smith)