Aer Lingus management and representatives of pilots at the airline are resuming talks at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) this evening in a bid to avert industrial action scheduled for Tuesday.
Aer Lingus has warned that if the industrial action, which is over rosters, goes ahead it could bring the bulk of its services to a standstill - a move which could affect up to 30,000 passengers per day.
Talks between the parties broke down in the early hours of Saturday morning.
In a statement this afternoon, the trade union Impact - of which the Irish Airline Pilots Association (Ialpa) is a branch - said that the LRC had issued an invitation to attend further talks this evening. It said that Ialpa had accepted the invitation.
Aer Lingus also said that it had agreed to take part in the new talks.
The airline today extended the period of grace for passengers to rebook flights free of charge until Friday ahead of Tuesday’s planned industrial action.
Aer Lingus pilots based in Belfast today also served the company with notice of industrial action to commence from Friday.
Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar yesterday urged both sides to avail of the State's industrial relation dispute resolution machinery in a bid to avoid a damaging dispute.
The dispute centres on rosters which Ialpa 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.
Ialpa said yesterday that while considerable progress had been made at the original talks, however, negotiations 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 yesterday it would 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, 8th, 9th and 10th or wish to change to an earlier or later date can do so via aerlingus.com", it said.
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”.
