Aer Lingus Flight Crew Industrial relations thread 2024

The opposite is true. The published roster will often work right up FTLs and even exceed them in many cases. Duties are then cut and changed as the month progresses to ensure the actual flight hours are kept just under the rolling 28 day limit. Very common for rosters to be filled with ‘watch hours’ memos during the summer.

How is it not great optics to inform the remaining staff of Aer Lingus as to what is going on and to try to put them at ease that they have a plan and possibly look for extra assistance in the customer care element from the remaining staff.

Would imagine there'll be a few added to that as the week goes on.

I'd be surprised if alot of transatlantic ran Friday because they won't be back before 5am, depending on if the pilots already flying before 5am are excluded or if its everyone signing on after 5am.

Also seems difficult to start operations by 13.30 on the Saturday.

I guess we'll see as the week goes on

I assume there will be some agreement in relation to flights that may already be in the air at 0500 Irish Time. The early TA flights usually land ahead of schedule and, as you'd imagine the pilots would rather get home on schedule anyway, you may not see too many eastbound cancellations on the night of the 28/29th.

Some of the media stories are daft.

"We'll lose 20k if we can't get to our wedding".

There'll still be tons of flights out of Ireland. If you get to London or Amsterdam you can go anywhere.

If you have a skim through Ryanair for example there isn't tons of flights and the ones that are available you'll need to shell out for if you want

Cheapest one way without bags etc to London next Friday €262, Saturday €245 that's with Ryanair, most expensive are 400 plus.

Amsterdam Friday €429, Sat €363

Not as simple as saying there's tons of flights get to one of these airports

The media will likely start turning on the pilots and their excessive demands and their extremely quick jump into strike mode.

The pilots seem not to have the public on side and that may move further away from them.

24% wage increase on top of their already exceptionally good salaries is just crazy.

When you add in all the allowances and overtime even a newly qualified pilot can be on close to 100k before tax AND they have a very defined path to bring them to €200k plus.

Do you work in the airline? Because those figures are factually incorrect (check the Aer Lingus website).

That point aside, there's a marked difference here in management's reaction and tone compared to anything I've seen before. They're going to let the pilots dig a hole for themselves I think. A few dismissals presumably being setup now with these legal letters to try and quash the union. It's going to get incredibly messy and I can't see the pilots winning this one, EI seem committed to weathering this one no matter how bad it gets.

I wonder though what is the relationship between the pilot salaries and those of the chief executive or even the HR suits talking about this dispute. How does this ratio compare with 10 or 20 years ago?

Starting salary for aer Lingus pilots is between €63,000 and €77,000 including sectoral pay.

They get a starting 25 days holiday plus public holidays

They also get an exceptionally generous 21% pension contribution.

Other perks include heavily discounted and free air travel - including for family members.

Rather nice as a starting base

Is it only outbound flights affected?

That's going to be rough for anyone needing accommodation in Dublin that night. Taylor Swift concerts etc

Can I ask how you're so informed about the pilot salary? Also I believe it's untrue that they get public holidays, sure who would fly the planes on those days?

More broadly, yes the pension is good but it's not like the employer is giving that without the tax benefit that goes with it. Also, the staff travel privileges are exactly the same for pilots as they are for every other employee in the company. BA pilots get better staff travel at their airline than most other employees. That is not the case in Aer Lingus.