Aer Lingus has said it expects 10 or 12 flights will be cancelled daily over the coming few days as part of the current dispute with cabin crew over rosters.
The Government today gave its first indication that it wants Aer Lingus and Impact, which represents cabin crew, to re-enter talks aimed at resolving the dispute. In his first public comment on the dispute, Minister of State for Labour Affairs Dara Calleary said he was "very concerned" at the situation.
He appealed to the parties "to engage with the State's industrial relations dispute settlement machinery".
An Aer Lingus spokesman said 12 flights - six round trips - have been cancelled today. The cancelled flights affect UK and European routes including Manchester, Prague, Dusseldorf and Amsterdam and represent less than 10 per cent of the airline's flight schedule for the day. The airline said that it was seeking to confine disruption to routes where it operated a number of flights per day .
The airline said it regretted the inconvenience to passengers saying, where possible, they would be informed of any cancellations in advance by text message and email and through updated information on www.aerlingus.com where flight information is available.
Aer Lingus warned yesterday that there was potential for further disruption in the days ahead as part of the continuing dispute over rosters with cabin crew. So far 175 members of cabin crew have been removed from the payroll by the company for refusing to operate controversial new rosters which management introduced unilaterally last week.
Impact said this morning that investigative meetings which the company planned to hold with cabin crew - the first stage in a disciplinary process which the company warned could ultimately lead to them being sacked - had been cancelled.
In a statement, Impact said the meetings had been cancelled "due to the absence of supporting documentation for the meeting".
"Impact had requested that the company supply the minutes of earlier meetings - which took place last week - between management and individual cabin crew. Those meetings had resulted in over 170 cabin crew members being removed from the payroll. However, the supporting documentation was unavailable."
Union spokesman Bernard Harbor said members have been reporting for duty each day and were willing to work. He claimed the hiring of planes to fill gaps in schedules was costing €400,000 a day.
“The company’s approach to this problem has been shown to be unreasonable and unsustainable and it’s clearly time for a rethink,” Mr Harbor said.
“It [Aer Lingus] has said it is unwilling to talk about the relatively minor issues that remain to be negotiated. And now it has reneged on its promise to passengers that flight schedules would be maintained.”
An Aer Lingus spokesman said meetings scheduled for this morning had been postponed "for technical reasons". However he said that other meetings with cabin crew would take place this afternoon.
