A week after the strike led by Biró, Aerolíneas went looking for pilots on LinkedIn

The call is new wherever you look: in the Linkedin job network, an ad calls for “Pilots / Pilots” for Aerolineas Argentinas. The use of the job network is new, as is the fact that pilots are being incorporated for the first time since 2018.

“We are looking for Pilots / Pilots. We offer you the opportunity to belong to our national airlinewhose mission is to guarantee the connectivity of Argentines, within our territory and with the rest of the world, promoting economic, social and cultural development ”, adds the invitation, published on Monday.

The Linkedin call came exactly a week after the Airline Pilots Association (APLA) paralyzed 60 flights of the Metropolitan Aeroparque airlines, to hold a four-hour “meeting” to ask for wage increases, granted 72 hours later to the Ministry of Labour.

The other claim made by the APLA chief, Pablo Biró, was the incorporation of more pilots into the national airline.

“Airline companies 150 pilots are already needednow that he is putting the fleet into service and (the company) denies the incorporation of those colleagues, “Biró said that day.

Now the company has just opened vacancies to fill 103 new positions for pilotsconfirmed to Clarione official sources, which they searched take distance of that move as if it were something previous and alien to the APLA claim.

“According to technical reports presented by Aerolineas Argentinas before the Ministry of Transport of the Nationthe need arises to incorporate 103 pilots to fly into the Embraer 190 and Boeing 737 MAX / 800 and NG fleets, after the entry of 4 new aircraft and the recovery of pre-pandemic operating levels, “the sources say.

Over the past two and a half years, Aerolineas remaining pilotslike most airlines, since the pandemic first grounded their planes and the return to business has been happening little by little.

According to sources from the state company, which he chairs Paolo Ceriani and it is politically under the orbit of the group The Camporatoday Airlines has 1,131 pilots, 93 less compared to 13 December 2019, the day of the settlement of Ceriani.

“When we arrived, in company the total number of employees was 12,046 and today there are 11,393, there was a reduction of 653 people. And the need for new pilots for the planes that are incorporated is real, “they added.

Pilot boarding is for airplanes clutch (of the former Austral) and Boeing B737 is to fill vacancies at the bottom of the ladder. In Airlines, the highest category is that of Commander of the Airbus A330the largest aircraft in the fleet, dual-lane and with more than 260 seats.

Paradoxically there is a significant number of pilots who have flown another of the large aircraft, the Airbus A340, which have been discharged and which they currently can’t find a place to fly on the A330. The reason? Airlines flights abroad today equivalent to 50% of what flown before the pandemic.

So in a company where there are more than 1,100 pilots for a fleet of just over 70 active aircraft (there are always about 10 in maintenance or out of order), there are highly experienced pilots who they cannot “alight” to fly single aisle aircraftlike the Embraer or the B737.

How many of those pilots are in those conditions? There was no answer in Airlines. According to industry sources, It will be about 40.