Dan-Air pilots to fight BA over payouts

A GROUP of 175 former Dan-Air pilots dismissed at the time of the British Airways takeover, some of whom received redundancy payments of as little as pounds 3,500 for 29 years service, are taking BA to an industrial tribunal.

Lawyers seeking compensation on behalf of the group are also examining whether to launch High Court action against BA for alleged breach of contract.

Unfair dismissal claims will be lodged today on behalf of the 175 pilots, although the cases are unlikely to be heard for two months.

Of the 408 pilots employed by Dan-Air at the time of the takeover last October, 120 were offered new jobs within BA and 308 were dismissed with only the statutory minimum redundancy payment.

Unlike flight engineers, cabin crew and ground staff, who were given redundancy payments of up to pounds 17,500, the pilots received payments of pounds 2,000 to pounds 3,500.

Flight engineers, for instance, received one year's salary and stewardesses two weeks' salary for every year of service, together with statutory redundancy pay. But all the pilots were offered was pounds 205 for every year up to 20 years.

Delphine Grey-Fisk, one of Britain's handful of women airline captains, received pounds 4,000 for 22 years of service with Dan-Air.

Yesterday she said: 'I was shattered and dismayed, not just at losing our jobs but at the way it was done and the amounts we received. We are all bitterly disappointed and devastated. A good many people have had to move in with their in-laws because they cannot keep up mortgage payments.'

Michael Ingle, a partner in Baker & McKenzie, the lawyers acting on the pilots' behalf, said they were determined to get a fair deal from BA. Not only had the pilots been denied the enhanced payments given to cabin crew and flight engineers, they had not been offered compensation for pension losses.

BA, he alleged, had also failed to observe proper dismissal procedures in a number of ways.