Passengers on KLM who are unlucky enough to lose their bags this summer may find themselves remonstrating with some very highly paid ground staff following an appeal by the airline for its pilots to take on menial airport shifts.
As it deals with a slump in international air travel, the Dutch arm of the Air France-KLM group has come up with an innovative way of balancing a payroll full of under-employed pilots with the seasonal need for more ground staff.
In what appears to be a first for the industry, the airline wrote at the end of May to its 2,000 pilots who fly from Schiphol airport proposing the voluntary scheme, which it said would also allow the pilots to get a glimpse “behind the scenes”.