Aer Lingus Flight Crew Industrial relations thread 2024

They won't be merging with high cost BA. They will use another AOC or create one as needed.

This is all reminiscent of when folks round here were salvating at the thought of Ryanair management backed in to a corner and would give the Irish crew everything they wanted.

Years roll by and I fly Ryanair often but rarely find myself on an Irish operated plane.

I have no skin in this game and am no fan of the Indo, but it's quite a leap to suggest that one of their journalists is just making stuff up. You don't set out any evidence for this assertion. Also - and I am not a fan of the "unnamed source" school of journalism either - there is more than one source quoted, and at least one is a union one. Given the references to internal Fórsa processes, that organisation or someone with links to it may be one of the sources.

I did set out my evidence for it, there are no sources attributed to most of the quotes and the journalist has apparent connections to Aer Lingus management. There are so many sections attributed to unknown sources that I'm not sure which one you're saying was attributed to the union, but if it's the same one I'm thinking of it quotes "an experienced trade unionist". That is so vague, there are any number of people who could fit that description and they may not even be connected to Fórsa.

I didn't see anything at all that would suggest a trade union insider provided any information on the internal processes. All that was repeated was exactly what Ialpa had already publicly confirmed: they have some sort of disputes committee that was meeting to consider escalation when the invite to the WRC came through.

The article supposes that this was a huge relief to Fórsa, who are apparently against the idea of further escalation, but I think it's particularly noteworthy that this whole section of the article is not accompanied by a quote from anybody, not even an unnamed source. So again, it appears to me that the journalist has just come up with this thesis and ran with it.

Like, if he had even attributed the quotes to "a Fórsa official who wishes to remain anonymous", I would have more faith in their veracity. But he doesn't. It has absolutely zero credibility. The only quotes that are attributed to named individuals are to Adrian Dunne (The COO) and to Mark Tighe (Ialpa president). Both appear to be from internal communications to Aer Lingus staff so the journalist does have a source inside the company. I'm guessing that the previous poster is correct and that the connection is a former colleague of the journalist who is now in EI management. I can't prove this unfortunately but both articles I have seen from this journalist have been extremely biased against the pilots so I'm confident his source isn't an Ialpa member.

Perhaps it is a bit on the conspiracy theory end of the spectrum, but it's not that far fetched to expect the company to try and control the narrative to their liking. To be fair, the vast majority of articles I've read are balanced and fair.

But this one, I mean have you read it? It's a stretch to call it journalism, it would be more at home in the fiction department.

Management's job is to run the company effectively. Part of that is maintaining a content workforce that is proud to work for you. It appears that they've totally an utterly failed on that front with their pilots. There is clearly a huge problem here and it goes beyond wages. The relationship between management and pilots looks like it has broken down completely. EI management are delivering excellent profits, but are understaffed to the point that they had to spend tens of millions of euro on hire in aircraft last year. Their frugality has allowed them to benefit from massive bonuses, but at what cost? Clearly the pilots are unhappy with how they are treated and if other accounts are to be believed, the maintenance department was in disarray and is still struggling to attract qualified engineers.

I think it's unfair to characterise what the pilots want as a hand out of sweeties, they want their pay to reflect the purchasing power it had 5 years ago. For a company delivering huge profits, that shouldn't be considered a big ask.

I was referring to management in general not particularly EI, Mr L.

The pilots have every right to pursue pay and conditions.

From what I know the companies operating profit was €278m.

I don’t that would be considered “huge profits” in the airline international business,which is extremely volatile

Margin is what matters really. I read somewhere recently that profit margin above 10% is exceptionally good in the airline business. EI had 9.9% last year which would therefore seem quite good.

Prior to Covid, Aer Lingus had huge cash reserves. In 2019 it was around 600m if I recall, closer to a billion the year before. Even now after the turmoil of Covid it has over 350m in cash. It's not a poor company any way you square it.

Yes, the industry is volatile. The staff are the ones who take the pain in the downturns, be that through pay cuts, eroded T's & C's and lay offs. Now in the good times the management are gladly taking huge increases in their remuneration but the staff are left lagging behind. It's about time someone stood up and called it out for what it is.

€5mln per year.

the pilots are looking for approx 22-24% not 8%, so the 5M figure doesn’t really add up in that context.

I was thinking of the delta between 12% and 20% (again very rough numbers).

I do think it's a bigger picture,I imagine those executives don't have the final say, it's coming from above and is about the Domino affect 20% increase would have.

I think there is a strong bang of hyperbole from that post.

To suggest that the management team doesn't "have too much regard for pilots" from" language and attitude" in

a trade union dispute for me is pushing the boat out fairly far.

Industrial disputes are nearly always fraught affairs as each side try to win the the public opinion battle.

Not a time to be jumping to conclusions as deep as that with any rhetoric flying around the airwaves on all sides

What do you mean "caused themselves"? They agreed it, presumably as one of the terms of a negotiated settlement. It was a reasonable feature from the staff point of view and there may be precedents for it in this or other sectors. Had management not agreed to it, perhaps a different and/or more costly agreement with the other groups might have resulted. There are two sides to every negotiation and experienced IR practitioners on both sides will each seek to extract terms from the other side to the maximum benefit of whichever party they represent. It is rarely, if ever, a binary win/lose outcome.

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/raising-aer-lingus-pilots-flying-hours-could-be-key-to-breaking-pay-deadlock/a493984996.html

Aer Lingus retains “strategic relevance” for its owner, IAG, but management will have to show their own bosses in London and Madrid that it can deliver levels of profitability to persuade the group to keep investing in the Irish airline, according to a top analyst.

Pilot productivity at the Irish airline is “quite a way below” the maximum commercial pilots are legally permitted to fly, according to Andrew Lobbenberg, the head of European transport equity research at Barclays. Aer Lingus pilots also fly far fewer hours than at rival Ryanair

There was an incident reported in the IT of a pilot being taken off duty in Toronto for mental health reasons having been sent a threatening letter from Aer Lingus management. How can it be safe to send such a letter to someone about to fly home in control of airplane across the Atlantic? The company also wrote a long legal threatening letter to all pilots late on a Friday night including those actively working. How is this a safe practice? Sending threatening letters to pilots while they are operating should not be acceptable no matter what the circumstances are. These are not isolated incidents and that is apart from the generally hostile language from the company. Unfortunately I don't think my post used any hyperbole.