The year 2021 was a testing year for all employees of the aviation sector, and particularly for flight attendants.
After the shock of 2020, we had to collectively adapt to the health restrictions and to an economic situation that was difficult for all airlines.
During that year, I was constantly proactive in protecting flight crew employment, maintaining your CRPNPAC [Civil Aviation Flight Crew Pension Fund] entitlements in spite of partial activity, and supporting the companies of the sector.
In this context, I mobilised the Board of Trustees of the CRPNPAC, our parent organisation, and the services of the CRPNPAC to propose adaptations and create the regulatory environment essential to implement these adaptations.
The year 2021 enabled the publication of several Decrees on the initiative of the CRPNPAC. Without giving an exhaustive list, here are the most important:
- Reconstitution of CRPNPAC entitlements, both in validated time and in pension entitlement, for flight crew placed on partial activity, as if they had worked, and without billing contributions;
- Validation of the entitlements of flight attendants solely on declarations (payslips, DSN [Individual Social Declarations]) in case of collapse of the airlines, thus enabling better protection of the rights of flight attendants whose airline disappears;
- Postponement of payment of CRPNPAC employers’ contributions until 31 December 2023 in order to support airlines and facilitate job retention;
- The application of new conditions of liquidation as at 1st January 2022 to avoid some flight attendants from suffering, during this complicated period, from a swift tightening of the conditions of departure.
While the CRPNPAC had already been a driver in the creation of partial activity specific to Flight Crew in 2020, it continued its commitment among all flight attendants in 2021, without let-up and with a single goal: to protect, support and accompany flight attendants affiliated to the CRPNPAC.
I am lastly pleased to announce that we have signed an agreement with French Polynesia and the State making the CRPN scheme mandatory in Polynesia for all flight attendants.
This agreement, planned by the legislator for over 10 years, was also the opportunity to adapt our rules to local specificities, with the aim of ensuring strictly equal treatment between all flight attendants based in France, regardless of whether they benefit from an autonomous and independent social legislation specific to the overseas territories.
We can be proud of having aligned the CRPN rights of our Polynesian colleagues to those of the mainland.
In our wonderful country, the year 2022 will be marked by Presidential and legislative elections. Without possible doubt, flight attendants as a whole will have to face new pension reform plans.
As I did in 2019, I will fight to defend the existence and spirit of our pension body.
More than ever, the solidarity of all flight crew must be expressed to defend our common asset: the CRPNPAC and its complementary pension scheme specific to flight crew.
But I do not doubt that you will rise to the challenge of this major issue.
For 2022, on behalf of the Board of Trustees and the teams of the CRPNPAC, I express the wish that this pandemic will finally end, and that air transport will emerge from this trial stronger than it entered it, with new capacities for resilience and adaptation.
I wish you, your families, and all those dear to you, a 2022 full of good health, joy and success.
Michel Janot
Chairman