Aer Lingus Flight Crew Industrial relations thread 2024

That's a fairly dramatic take on things

Do they need some cushion on flying hours to allow delays over the year?

An article written by someone without a clue how the industry works. EI’s pilots fly a mix of short and long haul. It’s a wholly different operation to FR so it’s not possible to compare the hours flown. Regardless, there are no WC-imposed limits on total hours flown in EI and the pilots can only fly the rosters they’re given. There was also a significant number of flying hours lost last year due to that embarrassingly huge amount of third-party hire-ins that EI used.

And let’s be clear here - FR should absolutely not be the yardstick by which the rest of the industry is measured. There’s a reason FR is considered a feeder-airline for larger, more-reasonable operators. It’s a training organisation just as much as an airline due to the huge level of pilot turnover.

FTLs are limits, not targets and any airline that treats them as targets isn’t putting safety first.

This time the “blame” for that one is squarely with management, not with the pilots. EI’s schedule is very seasonal and as someone else said, the A330s tend to be parked up for most of the winter with not much to do. Finding work and routes for these airplanes to do throughout the year, and not just summer, is management’s job. If the fleet was flown throughout the entire year as much as it is in May-September then productivity statistics would be a lot better and there would be no headline here. The introduction of LAS is a good starting point but there’s more the fleet could do during winter which would improve the stats.

Anyone know when the next disrupted flights will be announced? I need to know about Geneva to Dublin Monday 8th July...

25% parked and 25% getting heavy maintenance….which is half! 😂 look, don’t want to ruin your point but your numbers are a bit exaggerated.

perhaps that’s some of the productivity/flexibility EI wants to discuss, the ability of non-EI pilots to fly EI aircraft or making EI pilots available for these unproductive aircraft to be deployed in other IAG operations during the down time. It’s all speculation.

8hrs of talks done.

Labour court has informed EI & IALPA that it will be formally intervening with a hearing to be held on Wednesday

Work to rule continues but labour court requesting no further escalation before the hearing takes place

That’s a good idea, fly them three quarters empty for the winter and burn plenty of fuel.

So flights are still in danger after 8 hours of talks ?

Christ electing a pope wouldn't take so long

Yes, saw an interview with the IALPA president. He said exactly that - not only were Aer Lingus not willing to budge, they brought new demands. Hard to know how this will pan out now. Will the court take a dim view of the seeming unwillingness of EI management to negotiate in good faith? I think the more likely outcome is a recommendation that will see both parties get something, but if IALPA stick to their principle of not buying an inflationary pay rise, then we could be heading for an escalation of strike action. How long will we have to wait for the labour court recommendation?

What is flex rostering and why is it contentious.

Secondly, The Labour Court issued a recommendation a couple of weeks ago which was accepted by IAG and not accepted by IALPA. What is different this time round in terms of their role? I am not quite clear how their role is now changed based on the following which is taken from the Labour Court website.

The role of the Court in the resolution of industrial relations disputes is to act as a Court of last resort.  In other words, local dispute resolution arrangements in the organisation / company and other dispute resolution machinery of the State should have been fully utilised before a case comes to the Court. The Labour Court provides an industrial relations service to consider disputes that parties have been unable to resolve themselves or with the assistance of the Workplace Relations Commission. Such disputes can be referred to the Court for an ‘opinion’ in the form of a Recommendation of the Court which is not binding on the parties.

Decent amount of free time in the winter for A330 pilots. Short haul pilots are on a 5-3 split so the winter is almost as busy as summer for them.

They won't accept 12.5% , if whatever the labour court recommend is around that 12.5% then it'll be straight out rejected by IALPA most likely. You also can't accept a deal and then continue industrial action.

Work to rule is going to continue until there's a deal that gives both sides some of what they were looking for. Neither are going to want to look like they've lost.

If the labour court recommendation is rejected then I'd expect more all out strike days to be called.

Oh absolutely the next step is more all out strikes longer than 8 hours.

EI do seem to be handling the WTR relatively well, albeit it's 100% hitting their pocket. I've seen passengers being re-routed with Air France and business passengers getting an upgrade by being re-routed onto AF new A350 business class for example.

I'd been thinking along the lines of what you said there as well, more frequent ones on alternate days, that would have a huge impact with crews out of place. It'd absolutely cripple the EI network if they wanted to go down that route.