Aer Lingus Flight Crew Industrial relations thread 2024

I had planned on booking flights with AL for a trip in August but too much uncertainty for my liking to risk it. Is there any rumour as to when this might get resolved?

Three members of the top brass at Aer Lingus – including its chief executive and chief financial officer – earned the bulk of almost €2.8m in core director remuneration paid by the airline last year.

CEO Lynne Embleton, CFO Elizabeth Haun and chief corporate affairs officer Donal Moriarty split the lion’s share of the pay, with two non-executive directors – including former CEO Stephen Kavanagh – receiving a much lesser part of the compensation.

Newly filed accounts for the airline show that the top trio’s total €2.8m in emoluments, including basic pay, jumped from €1.1m in 2021, when global airlines remained mired in the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Total remuneration for the top directors at the carrier topped €4.1m last year and included almost €1.4m in benefits under long-term incentive schemes – certain to be shares in IAG. That figure was down from almost €2.4m in 2021.

The newly filed accounts for the airline reveal the payments.

Total executive pay to all Aer Lingus executive management, directors and non-executive directors rose to €6.2m from €3m, the accounts show. That includes payments to a total of 12 executives at the carrier, it is understood.

Last year, IAG chief executive Luis Gallego was paid just over €3m, compared with just under €1.3m in 2021. His pay last year included a base salary of €963,000 and a €1.6m bonus split evenly between cash and a deferred share award.

Unions at Aer Lingus recently secured a fresh pay deal for the airline’s staff, who are in line for a cumulative 13pc pay rise between this year and January 2025. They are also getting a €750 lump-sum payment.

Aer Lingus is part of the IAG group, which also owns British Airways, Iberia and Vueling. IAG releases third quarter results today. The third quarter includes the busy summer season and the results are likely to show a strong performance by the group and Aer Lingus, as it continued to benefit from a resurgence in international travel.

Last year, Aer Lingus posted a €38m operating profit as revenues surged to almost €1.7bn as passenger traffic recovered after the pandemic. Those figures compared with a €347m loss in 2021, when revenue was €367m.

Aer Lingus is hiring 200 cabin crew – here are the salaries, perks and height restrictions

But the airline made a pre-tax loss of €19m last year after it shouldered charges including €55m in finance costs and a €10.4m loss on derivatives.

The carrier’s financial performance has continued to improve during 2023 and it has hired a significant number of staff as operations return to normal.

It made a €40m operating profit in the first half of 2023, which compared with an €83m loss in the first six months of 2022.

The performance last year also reflects increased activity at the airline’s Manchester base.

Recently filed accounts for the UK arm of Aer Lingus, which launched transatlantic flights from Manchester to the US and the Caribbean in 2021, show that it generated a profit of €5.1m last year as revenue rose to just under €87m.

Manchester accounted for 13pc of all Aer Lingus transatlantic capacity in 2022 and 8pc of Aer Lingus capacity across its entire network.

Aer Lingus is expanding its network to the US again next year, launching a new route between Dublin and Denver, and relaunching a service to Minneapolis-St Paul. It has also relaunched a route between Dublin and Hartford, Connecticut, after a two-year hiatus.

You must have worked for some pretty **** companies mate, I've worked in the private sector for over 25 years and every single company I worked in had a contract payscale attached. Lol, don't even want to know where to begin with how wrong that statement is.

That's because inflation was pretty much at 0-2%, as were interest rates, so a pay freeze didn't have as much impact.

(24%).

Because if a company can’t afford to simply maintain the spending power of its employees year-on-year, then it has no business calling itself ‘successful’.

On your last paragraph:

The claim is not solely based on annual profits from 2023, that's merely an indication of how healthy Aer Lingus is and how capable it is of improving it's staff remuneration if it didn't focus solely on shareholder value and executive bonuses.

I'm also uncertain why you think this profit is unlikely to be sustained? Pandemic aside, Aer Lingus has posted significant profits annually for over a decade. This is despite being so badly managed that they rely on wet lease hire ins every summer. These aircraft cost around €100k per day. Imagine if the airline was staffed adequately and they didn't have to squander that potential profit? How many pilot/cabin crew/engineer etc salaries would that cover?

Lastly, Aer Lingus forecasts growing profits over the next 5 years to levels beyond the 2023 results. Ialpa are aware of this and so the claim, while only restoring lost purchasing power to pilots, is taking account of future financial performance.

I'm pretty sure most airlines do this nowadays, though the extent may vary. It's block-to-block time rather than time in the air that counts and at times taxi and ATC restrictions (for example) account for a not-insignificant portion of the overall journey time, especially on the fairly short hops that account for a lot of Irish traffic.

I just hope they get on with it and put us all out of our misery. I’m booked for MCO in July and have paid €3000 for hotel stays that are non-refundable. If I was earning €200k plus I wouldn’t dream of going on strike for more pay.

any ideas when they might announce a date?

To word this slightly better - it’s important that every employee of every company as successful as EI has the same spending power as they had in 2019. Companies have gotten away with socialising losses and privatising profits for too long. The rot stops now.

I never said they don’t have the right to negotiate for pay rises, I said I wouldn’t dream on going on strike if I was earning €200k plus.

The Labour Court has issued its recommendation, and the pilots have rejected it while IAG has accepted it. As a result, a strike by pilots is going to cause a lot of heartache and misery for thousands of Irish families with significant financial costs probably running into the millions in terms of non-refundable payments made.

And to add a little perspective, according to the latest research, the average salary in Ireland is c.45k.

At least with a minimum of 7 days notice and assuming it's only 1 strike day at a time, anyone affected can hopefully be moved to the day before or after the original travel date.

In Cork or Shannon, many routes are not daily. Eg Tenerife is Mon and Fri

I think that they can strike if they want; what bugs me is the mock “poor mouthing”. I saw a statement somewhere that 2/3rds of the airline’s staff earn less than the proposed pay rise for the top captain. I am paid very well and I will fight for pay in a bonus culture. None of us would have ever seen us as the sort of people who would “strike” to improve our terms and conditions. We would find better ways or else head for another employer. One significant issue is that the EI pilots, in the main, will not leave the country for another employer hence why they employ the strike tactic. It’s very shop-floor and not very “professional”.

Please play the ball and not the man.