Most flights on schedule as strike called off

AMID an uneasy and highly fragile peace between Aer Lingus and its pilots, nearly all Aer Lingus flights into and out of Ireland will go ahead today.

The 48-hour strike by 480 pilots was due to ground all the airline’s aircraft today and tomorrow, but was called off yesterday after the company agreed to meet with the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association at the Labour Relations Commission last night.

However, the basis of the difficulties still remains.

The pilots are still insisting the opening of a Belfast base with staff on lower terms and conditions than their colleagues south of the border is not acceptable. That is why they threatened to ground more than 45,000 passengers and would have done so if there had not been the 11th hour agreement to talks.

Management is holding firm that pay and conditions at Belfast will remain as set out already. For it to back down on this issue would hugely undermine its plans to implement wide-ranging cost-cutting measures under the Programme for Continuous Improvement 2007. That programme has already seen the company face the threat of strike action from SIPTU, which represents 1,800 of the airline’s staff.

Talks convened at the Labour Relations Commission last night were adjourned within two hours. The pilots and management are due to meet under the mediation of the LRC chief executive Kieran Mulvey again this morning at 11am.

“It is too early to say what is going to happen next,” said Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion at the conclusion of last night’s talks. “But the important thing is that the inconvenience to passengers has been minimised today and we are very grateful for that.”

Michael Landers of IMPACT said his union was confident that the dispute can be resolved.

In the meantime, all the airline’s short-haul flights are due to take off today as scheduled.

However, there is a level of disruption to US-bound flights today and tomorrow. This morning’s flight EI 105 from Dublin to New York has been cancelled as has

EI 104 from New York to Dublin leaving New York at 5.40pm.

Tomorrow’s flight EI 123 from Dublin to Chicago has been cancelled as has EI 122 from Chicago to Dublin.

Passengers travelling to the US and Dubai are advised to check in at least three hours prior to departure and customers who cancelled bookings due to the proposed strike may re-book their flights free of charge.

Over the past week when the strike still looked likely to proceed, the airline was forced to refund or reschedule flights for thousands of passengers. It also leased eight aircraft to try to carry out a restricted service.