People who have flights booked with Aer Lingus over the summer months will not be able to relax for a “long time” despite the possibility of a breakthrough in the dispute between the airline and its pilots on the basis of Monday’s Labour Court recommendation, according to industry sources.
The chances of the dispute worsening in the coming days have at least lessened but it is still likely to be some time before the threat of strike action is lifted.
Aer Lingus management said on Monday it would accept the final recommendation which would see pilots getting a 17.75 per cent pay increase. However, the pilots’ union Ialpa had committed in advance to putting the recommendation to its members in a ballot that is expected to take several days to conclude.
That could see the airline forced to cancel yet more flights. The airline has cancelled 548 flights, affecting about 90,000 passengers, since the pilots started an open-ended work to rule almost two weeks ago. Flight cancellations already announced run up to the end of this week.
The Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA) urged both sides “to put the customer at the centre of the agenda and end this dispute”, with its chief executive, Clare Dunne, noting that “disputes all end sooner or later [and] it is within their power to end it now”.
Travel writer and owner of online publication TravelExtra Eoghan Corry said he was cautiously optimistic the unrest might be coming to an end although he warned that things remained delicately poised.
He suggested Ialpa might use the figure of 17.75 per cent as a benchmark to go back into talks with management.
“It could well be that they put that in the pocket as a starting point,” he said. “It takes a long time to get your membership animated enough to give you a strike mandate and Ialpa won’t want to give it away lightly.”
Mr Corry said that even if the pilots rejected the Labour Court recommendations in a ballot, there was not likely to be a significant change in the short term.
“I don’t see it likely to escalate and I think they will keep the work to rule in place which means their earnings will be unaffected,” he said.
He also suggested that when the industrial dispute does end, Aer Lingus may have to sell seats at a discount in order to make up for a dramatic fall-off in bookings in recent weeks.
“There will likely be flash sales to fill unsold seats for later in the summer,” he said while warning that anyone looking to bag a bargain in the short term might be disappointed. “Flash sales tend to be most important on the sun routes and Aer Lingus has managed to get through the work to rule without cancelling too many of those.
“But if you are six weeks out and you haven’t sold the seats on a plane, you are running into trouble so if there are to be flash sales, we probably won’t see them for few more weeks.”
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