As you can see, our monthly newsletter has a fresh new look:  ECA has been promoting aviation safety for over 20 years and it was time to modernise our visual identity and logo, in order to support our aims and use modern ways of communication.

The financial crisis in Europe has hit the aviation industry as well, with many consequences on all our members: changes in their collective labour agreements (CLA), bankruptcies, shift towards low-fare airlines and reduced government funding. In addition, the way the European Commission is considering to further open our market to external competition from sometimes heavily subsidised carriers does not help an industry that is already in financial hardship.

The Hungarian National Carrier Malev went into bankruptcy after the European Commission demanded that the Hungarian government stop financing their airline and that Malev reimburse the subsidies they had received. This directly meant that the carrier had to stop all operations and all staff was suddenly dismissed. This triggered other airlines to fill in the gaps and increase their flights to and from Budapest. Pilots were approached by airlines such as Ryanair to sign contracts with them, but at the expense of their terms and conditions.

Spain is another issue of concern. The sudden and unexpected bankruptcy of Spanair left 400 pilots unemployed. Our Member Association SEPLA is striving to help its pilots find new jobs with reasonable terms and conditions. Unfortunately it will mean that a lot of experienced pilots will leave the European region and will have to start working in the Middle East or Asia. Our thoughts go out to them and we hope they will find a solution.

Another trend we see is that airlines are taking desperate steps to decrease costs. Instead of going into constructive discussions with the employees, they unilaterally cancel the CLAs and put pressure on the employees to accept completely new ones, as we have seen with Air France and Austrian Airlines. This is unacceptable and undermines the long-lasting cooperation between airline management and their staff.

All of these events show us that we have to stand together in these times of financial burden and strive for a sustainable airline industry with high safety levels in Europe.