Aer Lingus Flight Crew Industrial relations thread 2024

I know it’s a hypothetical question and like asking how long is a piece of string but I’m interested in posters thoughts of when they think this will be settled, week, month, 6 weeks etc. just your guesses.

good points Mr N…there seems to be a a lot of antagonism towards those who take a less belligerent attitude

to this dispute and are not rowing in four square behind the pilots.

I am not ‘against’ the pilots but also I am not debunking everything management say either.

There are two sides to every argument and it’s not black and white on either side.

These are difficult times for the operating pilots and working to rule for them is not going to be easy

Safely operating an aircraft is difficult enough without having to contend with industrial unrest problems.

was thinking myself it would be sorted before the Dail summer recess. The public won’t be happy if they break up and this is still going on.

In your opinion……

It doesn't deviate from what I have been posting all along, i would suggest

According to Mark Tighe this morning this has been rumbling on for 22 months which is a long time.

Who is responsible for dragging it on that long is debatable, but really, when stuff is left to fester that long

as in other aspects of life, it usually ends in a Big Bang . Thats what's happening here I would suggest.

Pilots seem to be quite entrenched on this one if I am reading Captain Tighe's demeanour correctly this morning.

Well yours is the first post in which anyone has accused me of "playing the man, not the ball" so I don't know why you're suggesting I'm a serial offender on that front?

I said "it stinks of begrudgery", I didn't direct it at you, I was referring to all the posters who have been claiming it was outrageous for a high earner in a senior position to seek a fair pay rise. If senior hospital consultants had been negotiating for an inflationary pay rise for 2 years unsuccessfully having had no rise in 5 years, I'd support them taking industrial action too, even if it affects health care services. They have worked extremely hard their whole lives to attain their position, they should be able to retain the value of their income at least.

As for empathy, I do of course sympathise with anyone affected by the work to rule or strike and as a matter of fact, I'm one of them! I was away last week and flew with EI. I was originally scheduled to fly home with my family today, but I rebooked for a flight on Monday and cut the holiday short. As it turns out the flight today is being operated by a hire in so we would have been fine but I wasn't willing to take that chance.

So while I understand the frustration I don't direct any anger at the pilots, I'm laying the blame squarely with EI management. Nobody who works for a very successful company should be earning less effective income than they were 5 years ago. EI management and IAG are playing the public because they're greedy, not the pilots, that's my opinion.

Your opinion seems to be that once someone is earning above some arbitrary threshold of income, regardless of how successful and profitable the company is, they should be willing to take an effective pay cut. Their legal right to industrial action, having gone through the correct processes, should not be available to them. That just doesn't make sense to me.

'Work to Rule' is not answering work calls outside work?

I've been on 'Work to Rule' my whole life so 😎

I know right xD I can't believe that the crews there actually do it - I know my banger phone is off the second I finish.

I support the pilots to a certain degree within the bounds of fairness and achievability. But damn if this whole "24% payrise, legally mandated rest periods, work to rule, legally mandated hours" isn't wholesale depressing for someone who works in the health service!

In relation to the short haul scale. I have a pal who is a FO at EI. He is on the A320/21's. As a result, despite operating short haul a lot of the time, is regularly over to the USA on the A321neo flights. This was not a thing in the past for the 32x pilots but is now. How do the differentiate that now? I was of the impression that nearly all the crews worked a mix of SH and LH?

This really doesn't surprise me based on how much more Ryanair-esque the airline (in every sense) seems to have become. At the same time, flight crew should really have a burner phone for this very reason, but I understand that is difficult with withheld numbers etc. If it doesn't say in their contract that they need to be on-call on days off, I'm surprised so many of them have let it get that far. That said it might just be part of the goodwill flight crew have been offering that management have been taking for granted.

Just don't answer the phone to unknown numbers. I never answer them.

Pretty sure if you join a strike when you aren't on strike it's illegal to start with and you'd be open to disciplinary issues.

Unless strike notice has been served by your union your expected in work. This is no different

Breaking news IALPA going into talks with Are Lingus tomorrow