Aer Lingus pilots to be balloted on Labour Court proposals, union says

Aer Lingus pilots will vote on what will be crucial Labour Court proposals to end their pay row with the company, their trade union leader confirmed on Wednesday.

The carrier announced that it would cancel 76 further flights from July 8th to 10th to combat a work-to-rule by members of the Irish Air line Pilots’ Association (Ialpa) as the Labour Court began its fourth bid to resolve the dispute.

Both sides said the court would issue a recommendation aimed at brokering industrial peace at the airline “within a few days” following a hearing that lasted more than 3½ hours on Wednesday afternoon.

Capt Mark Tighe, Ialpa president, confirmed afterwards that the union would ballot its members in Aer Lingus on any Labour Court recommendation.

Before the talks, he warned that pilots would “stand their ground against their employer” if this latest bid to break the deadlock fails.

Labour Court recommendations are not binding, so both sides in a dispute can accept or reject them. Ialpa members voted against interim proposals put forward by the court in May.

Pilots are seeking pay rises of more than 20 per cent to compensate them for the inflation of recent years, which their union insists is reasonable.

Aer Lingus maintains the company cannot offer them more than the 12.25 per cent it agreed with cabin and ground crews without pilots conceding extra productivity and flexibility.

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Donal Moriarty, Aer Lingus chief corporate affairs officer, argued that this would have “minimal impact” on individual pilots’ conditions, as he led the airline’s delegation into the Labourt Court.

“It will simply enable the airline to run more efficiently,” he added.

Capt Tighe noted afterwards that Aer Lingus chief executive Lynne Embleton recently received “almost €300,000″ worth of shares in the company’s parent, London-listed International Airlines Group.

Most cancellations announced on Wednesday are on short-haul business routes to airports in cities including London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt, with one flight to the US hit each day.

All told, Aer Lingus has cancelled 468 flights since Ialpa began a work-to-rule a week ago, including 120 services axed last Saturday as a result of an eight-hour strike by pilots. An estimated 75,000 passengers have been affected.

“In order to continue to protect as many services as possible from the continuing and highly disruptive impact of Ialpa’s continuing industrial action, Aer Lingus has had to take the step of cancelling 76 additional flights over the course of Monday 8th July to Wednesday 10th July (inclusive),” the company said in a statement.

“Implementing these cancellations is to enable us to protect as many services as possible for as many of our customers as possible. These cancellations will be implemented today, and details will be communicated to impacted customers.”

Customers who are impacted by the fresh wave of cancellations will be given the option to change their flights for free.

They will also be able to claim a refund or voucher.

Aer Lingus confirmed it had hired aircraft and crew from other operators, a practice known as “wet leasing”, to fly some services while pilots continued industrial action.

The company hired one Boeing 777 to fly from Dublin to Chicago, while it brought in two Airbus A320s to serve European destinations including Greek islands and Malaga, popular with Irish sunseekers, along with the Czech capital Prague.

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