PILOTS AT Aer Lingus have overwhelmingly accepted a new deal on cost-cutting measures and work-practice changes.
Pilots voted yesterday by 85 per cent to 15 per cent to accept a deal under which they will receive about €7 million in compensation for the changes.
The deal will see each of the company's 500 pilots receiving a payment of about €14,000.
In return for this compensation, pilots will have to fly for an additional 50 hours per year before the threshold for a premium payment, known as performance pay, is reached.
In addition, there will be a reduction in existing compensation paid to pilots for working outside their agreed contractual arrangements, while a traditional telephone allowance is to be abolished.
As part of the deal Aer Lingus management has agreed not to pursue further cuts in pay and pensions for at least three years.
It has also agreed that a new pay review for pilots will take place in 2011, while outstanding payments due under the current national agreement will be met.
Under the new deal the Irish Airline Pilots' Association (Ialpa) has secured the right to represent pilots at the airline's new base in Belfast.
The agreement reached yesterday with pilots and an earlier deal concluded with cabin crew means that Aer Lingus has now secured about half of the €20 million in cost savings which it had sought to generate this year across all headings.
However, the potential for further industrial relations conflict at the airline remains. This is over how it will seek to generate savings from among its ground-operation staff, who are represented by Siptu.
Last week the 1,800 ground-operations personnel voted decisively to reject a cost-saving deal agreed between the company and Siptu negotiators in February.
As part of the new work-practice proposals under the deal, which were aimed at making savings largely through the avoidance of additional recruitment, staff would have been asked to work shifts of varying lengths.
Airline management would also have had the freedom to move personnel between duties, for example between check-in and boarding, during the course of a shift.
Staff and management have been in contact over recent days in an attempt to deal with issues such as how rosters would operate under the proposed new arrangements.
Union sources said that although some progress had been made, it was nothing like enough to warrant a reballoting on the proposals.
Union sources maintained that some staff simply did not want to agree to changes on the scale sought by the company.
