LAST March, everyone, including SIPTU, welcomed the partnership deal with Delta Airlines. As one senior manager put it last week "Delta is our fairy godmother. It will save us from the ravages of other airlines on the transatlantic."
Only twice in the past 40 years has Aer Lingus shown a profit on the transatlantic route. Recent operating losses range from £1.4 million to £20 million.
The problem is that traffic has remained stubbornly seasonal, with high demand in summer and chronic overcapacity in winter. The beauty of the Delta partnership is that it boosts year round business via the airline's commitment to book 40 seats on the 330 seater Airbus from Dublin to New York and back each day.
There will inevitably be extra business generated by the "code sharing" agreement as well. Delta and Aer Lingus will offer potential customers a seamless service on each other's routes, including automatic baggage transfer from one airline to the other.
In return for its block booking Delta is able to offer customers the equivalent of an extra flight between New York and Dublin without going to the expense of buying, or hiring an extra aircraft.
Its demand for a Delta steward has to be seen in this context. It wants to provide a full Delta service to its passengers.
Also important is the fact that Delta is the largest airline in the world. It has a fleet of 600 aircraft, compared with Aer Lingus's 30. If it decided to challenge Aer Lingus for north Atlantic business the outcome would not be in doubt.
Of course, carrying a Delta employee on the route had to have repercussions. There was bound to be resistance to the company demand to reduce SIPTU numbers from 11 to 10 to make way for the Delta "flag carrier".
Yet the Labour Relations Commission compromise that the Delta representative be carried in addition to the II SIPTU crew for a trial period seemed reasonable.
The union supported it and the two to one rejection of the LRC proposal took management and SIPTU by surprise.
Coming after two years of cutbacks, including pay freezes and 1,500 redundancies throughout the Aer Lingus group, the reaction of the 800 cabin crew staff can now be seen as "the last straw to quote a union official, Mr Des Hughes Management looks at it slightly differently. "We probably have the best cabin crew in the world," said one source. "But they may not have come to terms with change."
It has adopted a tough stance. It says managers and supervisors will be used, if necessary, to maintain services. In an effort to bridge the gap, SIPTU negotiators offered a compromise by allowing the Delta steward to sit in a passenger seat. But the company says the cost in lost revenue of £300,000 a year is prohibitive.
The offer unmasked the unacceptable face of the dispute. There are 12 staff seats and the loss of one to a Delta steward would mean there was no "jump seat" left to carry Aer Lingus staff free.
The union prefers to keep the emphasis on the threat to jobs. But the company says it intended recruiting 38 permanent cabin crew and 70 ground staff before this dispute blew up. Those plans are now on hold.
Significantly, SIPTU did not attempt to cause disruption by holding information meetings on the dispute for other members in Aer Lingus at the weekend. This confirms the view that cabin crews have little support from the rest of the workforce.
The same is true of the union leadership in Liberty Hall. This is one dispute the union would prefer to see settled without a strike.