Up to 30,000 Aer Lingus passengers scheduled to travel on Tuesday face the prospect of serious disruption following the collapse of talks between management at the airline and pilots aimed at averting a dispute over rosters.
Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar has called on Aer Lingus management and pilots to re-engage in talks with a view to settling the dispute.
A spokesman for the minister said today Mr Varadkar was calling on the parties to use the State's dispute resolution mechanisms to reach agreement. The Minister believes any dispute would be "extremely disruptive", the spokesman said.
The Irish Airline Pilots Association (Ialpa), which is a branch of the trade union Impact, said earlier that further conciliatory talks seemed unlikely at this stage.
However, both the union and the company has said they are available for further discussions.
Ialpa said that while considerable progress had been made the talks broke down on the longer-term issues around roster arrangements.
Some informed sources said that pilots had sought the introduction of “fixed pattern rostering” which would see them receive a specific number of days off after a specific number of days on duty.
However sources said that the company had concerns about productivity issues surrounding such a system.
Aer Lingus said that now consider what contingency plans could be put in place for its customers to deal with the planned industrial action.
"Customers who wish to cancel bookings for travel on June 7th and 8th or wish to change to an earlier of later date can do so via aerlingus.com", it said.
The dispute centres on rosters which the Irish Airline Pilots Association, a branch of the trade union Impact, has argued are excessively onerous.
Pilots claim that under the current roster arrangements, they may only get one day off after working five or six days. They say this is due to an overall shortage of pilots at the airline.
Management has maintained the problem was not pilot shortages but pilot productivity.
Pilots have said that from Tuesday, they will not work on days that they are not on the roster or on annual leave days, and would report for duty one hour later than their rostered reporting times.
Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller said earlier this week that the planned withdrawal of flexibility by pilots would “destroy our ability to operate a proper schedule as we will miss our airport slot times, parking stands, gate positions and will be unable to fulfil flight connections for customers”.
