UK: Pilots' fury at government ad advising flight crew to retrain

The main pilots’ union has reacted furiously to a government advertisement appearing to suggest that flight crew should retrain for jobs in cyber. The ad depicts a female first officer. The copy reads: “Naomi’s next job could be in cyber. (She just doesn’t know it yet.) Retrain. Reskill. Reboot.” Brian Strutton, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) said: “It’s astonishing that the government can be so tin-eared. We’ve been calling for government support for the airline industry for months. It was the first in and will likely be the last one out of this crisis. We’ve already seen hundreds of pilots lose their jobs or take significant cuts to their pay. And yet the government’s response is to casually tell young pilots who’ve spent over GBP100,000 on highly-specialised training to give up their career, abandon their skills and their hopes and dreams. Aviation will power the UK’s post-Covid economic recovery, rebuild our trade and global connectivity and we will need pilots like ‘Naomi’ to do so.” Tim Darby, a Boeing 737 pilot for Norwegian, tweeted: “What a disgraceful advert by the #UKgovernment. “They should be helping us, not dumping us on a scrap heap – disgusting.”<br/>