Vivienne Clarke
Holidaymakers are "extremely worried" about the impact of the scheduled industrial action by Aer Lingus pilots, a travel agent has said.
Pilots at Aer Lingus have served notice to the airline that they intend to go on an “indefinite” work to rule starting next week.
The notice was served on Tuesday afternoon, and informed Aer Lingus that the pilots’ work to rule status would start on June 26th from midnight and would last “indefinitely”.
The chief executive of the Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA), Clare Dunne, said people with holidays booked this summer are "really, really worried."
"They can't look forward to their holidays now because they don't know if they're going to be able to go or not," Ms Dunne told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
"They're facing into long delays, possibly cancellations, possibly financial penalties, because if they've booked their flight or their accommodation separately, they may lose on that if their flight is cancelled and they can't get where they need to go. So really it's not great and not a great outcome for the summer,” she said.
Ms Dunne said that while work to rule was better than an all-out strike, inevitably there would be disruption and not everybody would get to travel.
The ITAA had already seen a fall in Aer Lingus bookings with people opting to use other airlines if planning to travel over the next four to five weeks. Her advice to people who had already booked with Aer Lingus was to “sit tight and see how it pans out.”
“That's really all we can do at this point. There's not much point in cancelling and losing money on the basis that you might be disrupted, because we don't know yet.”
Aer Lingus pilots voted overwhelmingly for industrial action in a dispute over pay, which was announced on Monday.
Members of the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association (IALPA), which represents hundreds of pilots at the airline, voted 99% in favour.
IALPA president Captain Mark Tighe said: “We are now at a point where this dispute has escalated to indefinite industrial action by pilots.
“We are in this position because management have failed to provide us with a meaningful offer on pay that accounts for inflation and the sacrifices made by pilots to save Aer Lingus during the pandemic.”
IALPA’s industrial action will involve no working overtime, or any other out of hours duties requested by management; only working the published rosters and not accepting or working any amendments to published rosters; not logging into the Aer Lingus portal or “e-crew” outside of work hours; as well as not answering phone calls outside of work hours.
In a statement, a spokesman for Aer Lingus said: ““IALPA’s decision to serve notice of industrial action by Aer Lingus pilots was entirely unnecessary.
“Aer Lingus will assess the impact of the full detail of the industrial action served by IALPA, including the strict ‘work to rule’ that they have outlined.
“It will inevitably result in significant disruption to our customers and to other employees. Aer Lingus will do everything possible to minimise the disruption to customers, but unfortunately a significant level of disruption is inevitable.
“In advance of being served with the notice, Aer Lingus wrote to IALPA informing them that industrial action at this time of year would cause very significant disruption and have a devastating impact on customers and their families going into the summer holiday season.
“In that context, Aer Lingus asked IALPA that advance notice of at least 15 days be provided.
“Such a level of notice which has been a norm where industrial action has been taken internationally in other airlines, would provide Aer Lingus with more opportunity to try to make alternative arrangements for a greater number of customers.
“IALPA declined Aer Lingus’ request to give advance notice of at least 15 days.”
