Management at Aer Lingus said they will have to resort to other cost-saving measures, including immediate compulsory redundancies, after "all aspects of the proposed Transformation Plan" were not agreed with employees.
Following a board meeting this evening chief executive Christoph Mueller said that although management and unions had come close to signing a deal, an agreement had not been reached with all of the company’s employees.
Mr Mueller said that while the majority of staff “understood” and were “committed” to achieving change at the airline he blamed the lack of a deal on the Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA) and to a lesser extent, Cabin Crew.
The cost-cutting plan included more than 670 job losses at the company, changes to work practices and an average 10 per cent pay cut for staff whose basic pay exceeds €35,000 a year.
In a statement released this evening Mr Mueller said: “In the absence of real cost savings being delivered from all employee groups, we will have to resort to other measures.
“The Board and Management will now move to reduce capacity, further eliminating routes which are loss making as a result of our high cost base. This will result in the operation of fewer aircraft, which in turn will lead to additional redundancies beyond those included in the Transformation Plan.”
“It is very likely that these redundancies will commence immediately and will be compulsory," he added.