Aer Lingus decides which flights to cancel on first five days of pilots’ strike action

The airline said the indefinite nature of the action by Ialpa union members was designed to severely disrupt passengers in peak summer season, and said it had taken the step of cancelling flights scheduled for the first five days of the planned action from Wednesday June 26 to Sunday June 30.

It has begun contacting affected passengers.

In a statement this afternoon, the airline said: “The insidious and indefinite form of Ialpa’s industrial action is designed to severely disrupt passengers in the peak of the summer season. Without these cancellations, the impact would be a lot worse for customers.”

The airline said 24 flights a day have been cancelled in the first five days on the industrial action – a total of 124 flights over those five days.

“This will impact approximately 4,000 customers per day and 20,000 customers over the course of the five days,” Aer Lingus said.

“The level of cancellations is currently at the lower end of the 10pc – 20pc range. However, given the form of the industrial action there may be additional cancellations which happen close to the time of travel.”

The airline said it has “automatically rebooked some customers onto alternative flights and has begun emailing all other customers informing them of the cancellation and advising them of their options: to change their flight for free, to request a refund or to request a voucher”.

The airline said passengers can find out which flights are affected by visiting aerlingus.com.

It added that Aer Lingus Regional flights, operated by Emerald Airlines, and Aer Lingus UK transatlantic flights from Manchester, are unaffected by the industrial action.

Earlier estimates were that up to 40,000 passengers will hit by flight cancellations. The airline is to get in touch with passengers and offer a refund or alternative booking.

The pilots are to begin an indefinite work-to-rule from next Wednesday after balloting for industrial action, which means they will not engage in overtime or out-of-hours duties.

Passengers face days of uncertainty and potential travel chaos as one in five flights are at risk of being cancelled.

With industrial action by pilots due to start on Wednesday, Aer Lingus said it might have to cancel as many as 44 flights a day in the first five days of the unrest.

That is up to a fifth of the roughly 220 flights a day the airline operates during the busy summer season.

It will upend travel plans for as many as 8,000 people a day.

The move has been branded as “insidious” by the company, which is cancelling up to 20pc of flights over a five-day period.

Donal Moriarty, chief corporate affairs officer with Aer Lingus, said the airline was were taking the move to prevent further cancellations.

He said that this form of industrial action “gets worse day by day” and that there was a risk that further cancellations would be needed.

“What will happen over the next couple of days is that impacted passengers will be contacted and advised of cancellations if it affects them and then given their options in terms of refund, re-accommodation or voucher,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

He said people had also been given the option to cancel or rebook flights for a later date for free.

Pilots, represented by the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (Ialpa), are seeking a pay increase of 24pc, which they say equates to inflation since the last pay rise in 2019.

Aer Lingus has described the pay demand as unrealistic and said there had been no pay deals in Ireland that delivered such an increase.

It is understood that the airline’s short-haul routes across Europe will be most heavily affected.

That means holiday plans, weddings and other family events will be scuppered for a large number of customers. Business travellers will also face huge disruption.

However, passengers will have to wait and see whether they are directly impacted, with the airline promising more information in the coming days.

The airline has warned it will have to cancel between 10pc and 20pc of its flights every day as the pilots stage action in the pay dispute.

Aer Lingus has already warned that the effects of the indefinite work-to-rule by pilots will get worse as it drags on.

And it is believed Aer Lingus still will not know until early next week what type of additional capacity it can secure to try to re-accommodate passengers on other airlines, or what extra jets it might be able to hire to help it get passengers to their destinations.

Speaking this morning, Ialpa president Captain Mark Tighe said the claim that 20pc of flights could be cancelled during the industrial action raised questions about the management of the airline, if it was reliant on pilots working on their day off or out of contract to “bring people from A to B”.

“A work-to-rule very simply means that people work to their contracts, the contract to which they are employed. Some serious questions need to be raised here about management’s operation of the airline because, think about it, they’re selling tickets, so they’re committing to bring people from A to B so they have to have those pilots,” he said.

Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Tighe said the claim that up to 20pc of flights could be cancelled during the industrial action “because pilots don’t want to work on their day off” was “not credible” and equated to a shortage of pilots.

He said the 24pc increase pilots were seeking account for the cumulative increase of inflation over time and the airline group already had sanctioned the same increase for sister airline British Airways’ pilots.

He insisted the pilots’ pay claim of 24pc was “entirely affordable” for Aer Lingus.

He claimed management was insisting that pilots must “sell” their working conditions in exchange for any increase, while the airline was making “enormous profits”.

Tánaiste calls on both sides in the Aer Lingus dispute to get back around the table

“I’d ask anybody to think about their own situation and they’re watching their pay erode, their ability to buy erode with inflation and as the CSO has shown, the majority of people have achieved inflation over time and we’re looking for people to consider that we deserve that as well.”

He said the duration of the industrial action would be dependent on management, adding that talks on the issue had been effectively ongoing for 22 months.

Mr Moriarty said: “It is really impactful on our services and in order to protect our passengers and prevent the situation from being worse, involving more cancellations, we had to take this step.

“What will happen over the next couple of days is that impacted passengers will be contacted and advised of cancellations if it affects them and then given their options in terms of refunds. We’ve also proactively offered to people who are anxious about their travel in the week starting on June 26 that they can proactively cancel their own flight, get a refund, get a voucher or indeed book to a later date.”

He said the impact of the industrial action by pilots would be “cumulative and insidious”, adding: “It gets worse day by day as the roster becomes less efficient and therefore, there is the risk that an increasing level of cancellation is going to be required over time.”

Mr Moriarty said the airline was keen to avoid that scenario and would like to engage in direct discussions to reach a “reasonable settlement to this pay dispute”.

He described Mr Tighe’s claim that British Airways pilots received the same increase being sought by Aer Lingus pilots as inaccurate because the airline “did a three-and-a-half year pay deal with a 15.5pc pay increase”.

“Also, the reference to 24pc being aligned to inflation, there have been no pay deals done in the Irish economy within the public sector or any other relevant sector that delivered a 24pc pay increase. The reference that Ialpa is making to CSO data is very selective and inaccurate and skewed by the inclusion of outlier sectors such as the information and technology sector.”

He said the airline valued the pilots and had offered a pay deal of 12.25pc, adding that Aer Lingus was open to intervention from other forums such as the Workplace Relations Commission.

Cancellations

It is understood the flight cancellations next week will be biased towards short-haul services.

The industrial action will not affect Aer Lingus Regional services, which are operated by a separate company on a franchise basis. Aer Lingus Regional pilots agreed a pay deal earlier this year.

But the Ialpa and IAG-owned Aer Lingus appear to be hunkering down for a drawn-out dispute.

Taoiseach Simon Harris said yesterday it was “utterly reprehensible” that children are being “used as pawns” in the dispute, as families prepare to head off on holidays.

“The idea that passengers – children due to go on their summer holiday – would be used as pawns in an industrial relations dispute that has already been considered by the Labour Court is utterly reprehensible, and people need to step back from the brink,” Mr Harris said.

Sources have said that IAG, which also owns British Airways, Iberia and Vueling, will stand firm in the face of the pilots’ pay demand, because it could cause contagion throughout the group.

An independent pilot pay tribunal last year recommended a 12.25pc increase in consolidated pay and a 1.5pc rise in unconsolidated pay for the pilots.

The Labour Court issued an interim recommendation last month that would have given the pilots a 9.25pc pay increase. That proposal was accepted by Aer Lingus but was overwhelmingly rejected by pilots.

Aer Lingus issued a statement last night saying it had now assessed the impact of the planned action by Ialpa.

“The ‘work-to-rule’ announced is an insidious form of industrial action which will have a cumulative and negative impact on Aer Lingus customers,” it said. “Its indefinite form is designed to severely disrupt passengers in the peak of the summer season. The impact will cause many flight cancellations – many of which may happen close to the time of travel.”

It said the cancellations being planned in the first five days of the action would be put in place over the next two days.

“Implementing these cancellations is to enable us to protect as many services as possible for as many of our customers as possible,” it said.

“The details of those cancellations will be communicated to impacted customers over the next couple of days.”

The Aer Lingus travel advisory page will have up-to-the-minute information on all the options.