Pilots wary of hard Brexit prospects

LONDON - British pilot union Balpa is urging the Prime Minister and EU to "publicly commit to signing a UK-EU air service agreement" in order to keep planes flying, even if a broader trade agreement is unachievable.

This week is widely seen a crunch point in the EU-UK negotiations and the PM and his allies have referred to their confidence that the UK will prosper even without an agreement. "But aviation will not," Balpa said. "We need an EU-UK air service agreement otherwise planes simply cannot fly between the UK and the EU."

There is no WTO fall-back option for aviation. "We would ideally like to see the current open skies arrangements continue, but this seems extremely unlikely given the political circumstances", the pilots said. "We currently enjoy high level freedoms of the air between the UK and EU. We need as many of those freedoms as possible to continue."