Talks at the Labour Relations Commission aimed at averting a shutdown of Aer Lingus services from Tuesday due to an industrial dispute by pilots are continuing tonight after they resumed this afternoon.
The representatives of the pilots maintained yesterday that the row over rosters stemmed from staff shortages which were the fault of management.
However, Aer Lingus director of human resources Michael Grealy said the problem was not one of pilot shortages but of pilot productivity. Up to 30,000 passengers per day face disruption from next week if the dispute goes ahead.
Pilots claim they are being asked to operate excessively onerous rosters as a result of a shortage of personnel. They claim under the current roster arrangements they may only get one day off after working five or six days.
Ryanair today claimed it had seen 25 per cent rise in late bookings for next Tuesday amid the industrial dispute at Aer Lingus. "Ryanair is starting to really warm to the Ialpa [Irish Airline Pilots Association] union, who continue to cause uncertainty for Aer Lingus holidaymakers at peak times of the year," the carrier's head of communications, Stephen McNamara, said today.
Aer Lingus has had to cancel some flights and hire aircraft and crew as a result of a lack of pilots in recent weeks. However it said the numbers involved represented only a tiny fraction of its total flights. It said between May 23th and May 31st, eight flights out of 2,250 had either been cancelled or were the subject of a “hire in” as a result of cockpit crew shortages.
Yesterday the employers’ group Ibec criticised the threatened action by pilots as “opportunism of the worst kind” aimed at causing maximum disruption to the public.
Trade union Impact, of which the Irish Airline Pilots Association is a branch, said it had sought to raise the roster issue and pilot shortages with Aer Lingus repeatedly since last summer but management did not engage on the issue.
Pilots have said that from Tuesday they will not work on rostered free days or annual leave days, and would report for duty one hour later than their rostered reporting times.
Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller said the planned withdrawal of flexibility by pilots would destroy its ability to operate a proper schedule as it would miss airport slot times, parking stands and gate positions.