Aer Lingus passengers are due to begin finding out from today if their flights have been cancelled next week due to industrial action by pilots.
Yesterday, the airline said it will have to cancel between 10% and 20% of flights in the first five days of a work-to-rule by members of the Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA).
Up to 40,000 passengers could be impacted by the cancellations between Wednesday 26 June and Sunday 30 June.
“Implementing these cancellations is to enable us to protect as many services as possible for as many of our customers as possible,” Aer Lingus said in a statement.
“The details of those cancellations will be communicated to impacted customers over the next couple of days.”
Customers scheduled to travel between 26 June and 2 July will be given the option to change their flights for free or cancel their flight and claim a refund or voucher.
Aer Lingus pilots who are members of IALPA voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action, up to and including strike action, in a dispute over pay.
The union served notice to Aer Lingus of an indefinite work-to-rule from next Wednesday, which will involve the pilots not working overtime or “any other out of hours duties requested by management”.
It will also involve the pilots only working the published rosters and “not accepting or working any amendments to published rosters”.
Pilots will not log into the Aer Lingus portal or ‘e-crew’ outside of work hours nor will they answer phone calls outside of work hours.
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Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland IALPA President Captain Mark Tighe said serious questions need to be asked of management’s operation of the airline because if they are still selling plane tickets and “if they are going to cancel up to 20% of the operation because pilots don’t want to work on a day off, that’s not credible. There’s something else going on here, there’s a shortage of pilots”.
Asked on how long work to rule will last, he said it would depend on the response of the management team in Aer Lingus, adding that talks had been ongoing for 22 months.
Cpt Tighe said the 24% pay rise being sought was an accumulative increase of inflation over time.
He said the pay structure for pilots at Aer Lingus was similar to other airlines, but the top end of the scale could only be reached after 26 years.
Aer Lingus said it fully understood the anxiety being experienced by customers, given the uncertainty caused by the dispute.
“IALPA’s industrial action will have a wholly unnecessary impact on customers who are travelling in the coming weeks, at what is peak holiday season for families,” it said.
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Aer Lingus Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Donal Moriarty described the industrial action by IALPA as insidious.
Speaking on the same programme, he said the airline took the step of cancelling flights to “protect our passengers and prevent the situation from becoming worse”.
Mr Moriarty said the daily impact of the dispute was very significant, both on customers and on the business and described IALPA’s claims as untenable in terms of future investment in Aer Lingus.
“There is the risk that an increasing level of cancellation is going to be required over time. We are keen to avoid that and we would like to engage in direct discussions with IALPA to reach a reasonable settlement to this pay dispute”.
Mr Moriarity said the airline is open to any intervention from the Workplace Relations Commission and has asked Forsa and IALPA to agree to that.
