Aer Lingus has cancelled an additional 76 flights next week amid ongoing disruption stemming from a pay dispute between it and members of the Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association (IALPA)
The cancellations affect flights that had been scheduled between Monday, July 8, and Wednesday, July 10.
In a statement on Wednesday, the airline said it was implementing the cancellations “to enable us to protect as many services as possible for as many of our customers as possible”.
Passengers impacted by these latest cancellations will be contacted directly, the airline said, and will be given the option to change their flight for free, or to claim a refund or a voucher.
“Aer Lingus fully understands the anxiety being experienced by customers given the uncertainty caused by IALPA’s industrial action and is giving impacted customers as many options as possible,” a spokesperson said.
Details of the services impacted, and up-to-date information on all flight cancellations, can be found on the ‘Travel Advisory’ page of the Aer Lingus website.
Labour Court meetings
News of the the cancellations comes ahead of a meeting between representatives of Aer Lingus and IALPA at the Labour Court on Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting represents the latest attempt to bring the two sides together to resolve the ongoing pay dispute, which has seen IALPA members begin an indefinite work-to-rule action, resulting in them withdrawing from out-of-hours services.
Aer Lingus and IALPA representatives are due back in the Labour Court for a meeting on Wednesday. File Picture: Sasko Lazarov/ RollingNews.ie
After facilitating lengthy discussions on Monday, the Labour Court scheduled another meeting for Wednesday, after which it will issue a recommendation.
Pilots also staged an eight-hour strike on Saturday, during which hundreds of pilots marched around Dublin Airport, holding signs that read, among other things, “no pilots, no profits”.
The industrial action has now resulted in more than 400 flight cancellations, with the travel plans of tens of thousands of passengers affected.
IALPA members had been seeking a pay increase of 24%, which they say equates to inflation since their last pay rise five years ago.
If these rounds of Labour Court talks fail, IALPA has said it would return to consider an escalation of its industrial action.
On Tuesday, Taoiseach Simon Harris said he wanted to see engagement from both parties at the industrial dispute body, urging both sides to stay there for “as long as it takes” to see the issues at hand resolved.
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