Pilots are refusing to take part in the upcoming ID card
trials for airside workers.
18-month trials are
due to start this autumnat Manchester and London
City Airports, but the union, which represents 10,000 commercial
pilots, says its members will not take part.
The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) says its members
are refusing to be guinea pigs for the scheme.
Balpa says the ID cards will not make security arrangements
easier for pilots, who already have to hold a different pass for
every UK airport.
A recent poll by the union found 40% of pilots felt "less able
to operate the aircraft" as a result of stress caused by slow
security processes.
The Home Office has said the trials will be voluntary, but Balpa
says it is not possible to get the security passes pilots need
without having an ID card.
General secretary
Jim McAuslan said, "Our members believed the government promise
that the national ID card would be voluntary, but they now know it
is anything but. Our members must have an airside pass to operate
aircraft and now discover that to get that pass they must have a
national ID card."
McAuslan added pilots are concerned about what will happen to
the data they are being asked to provide the government with. "Like
every other citizen, they ask themselves what will happen to the
data they are coerced into providing; whether it will it be safe,
whose hands might it fall into, and what might they do with the
data? Yes, there have been lots of reassuring noises, but frankly
we don't believe them. Our members increasingly have a sense that a
line is being crossed in the relationship between state and
citizen; a sense that Big Brother knows best."