Back to News Archive

The Aer Lingus 75th anniversary gave a unique PR opportunity to showcase the airline and its achievements. In the addition to the celebratory events held on 27th/28th (covered elsewhere in this issue) the anniversary attracted widespread media publicity with features and interviews both on TV and in the print media. Notable was an interview with Christoph Mueller by Nicola Clark in the New York Times, in which he spoke about Aer Lingus and possible alliances. "A lot of carriers have very swiftly decided to join an alliance, almost with the notion of joining a country club," he said. "But alliance benefits are mainly limited to frequent business travellers, because only they make full utilisation of seamless travel, frequent-flier programs, lounges and so on. We only have 15% of those ‘kind of passengers’ as opposed to airlines like Lufthansa with 45 to 50%. "So by definition, our cost-benefit ratio in joining an alliance is much lower."  He also made a presentation to the Engineers Ireland Annual Conference in Galway in April, in which he expressed his concern about the level of unemployment in Ireland and said the knowledge economy could not solve everything. The economy needed a balance of skills. He gave the example of Boeing retaining the intellectual work themselves on the 787 and sending out what they may have considered lesser work. Aer Lingus he said had the same problem with some sub-providers on the Continent who were bad at implementation. High engineering, MBAs, accountants and corporate lawyers on their own are not enough to put the economy on track. “Brain without muscle is a corpse” and this is why Aer Lingus had restarted a three-year apprenticeship programme after a 20-year gap. Elements of manual skills are needed to complement highly intellectual engineering and crafts in the industry are a must. There is a need within families and friends in Ireland not to over assess the value of intellectual skills versus craft skills he noted and the people with skills should become entrepreneurs.

In the same week as the celebrations were taking place, Aer Lingus took delivery of its latest Airbus A320-214, EI-DVN. It positioned to Dublin from Finkenwerder on 24th May.

Unfortunately some of the gloss was taken off the celebrations by the news of a possible pilots' strike from 7th June. On 31st issued a statement warning of the industrial action by the IALPA branch of the IMPACT trade union representing Pilots at the airline. Following a ballot of its members, 87% had voted in favour of industrial action. Pilots based in Cork and Dublin had decided not work on rostered free days or annual leave days, and that they would report for duty one hour later than their rostered report times. Unspecified contingency plans were put in place by Aer Lingus and over 30,000 were passengers expected to be affected.

Christoph Mueller, Chief Executive officer commented, "This withdrawal of flexibility will 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. In addition pilot and cabin crew operational duties will be out of sync which may result in cabin crew having insufficient hours to operate all flights. This may lead to a full cancellation of operations from Tuesday 7 June unless IALPA / IMPACT stand down their action." The statement noted that a bilateral process had been ongoing for some time to develop new manpower planning and roster models that would enable the carrier achieve the already agreed levels of productivity while providing pilots with better quality rosters. However the issue has been exacerbated by shortage of pilots due to higher than expected levels of attrition in the UK (where remuneration is lower). Nevertheless there appeared to be chronic rostering problems, illustrated by Aer Lingus pilots looking favourably at some Ryanair practices! The airline, whose flights were halted for three weeks in January in an industrial dispute with cabin crew, has said the pilots' action during its peak summer season could have a significant adverse affect on profits.

Aer Lingus stressed that it had invited IALPA / IMPACT to talks and is willing to work towards a mutually workable solution to this issue and at the eleventh hour this is what in fact happened and the union agreed to postpone planned until the end of the month and would present proposals to its members that could lift the threat completely. "There will be no action this week," said Michael McLaughlin, a member of the IALPA's executive. "After that it depends on what the members vote." By that stage (5^th June) thousands of passengers had already changed their travel plans to avoid the strikes. An Aer Lingus spokesman said: “Customers who have already changed bookings to another date, may change back to their original planned date of travel if they so wish via aerlingus.com.” but the damage to the carrier’s reputation had been done. One interesting issue was the fact that the Labour Relations Commission acted in the dispute between Aer Lingus and pilots hired under different conditions to those based in the Republic of Ireland and under UK law.

Unfortunately, the settlement of the dispute seems to be somewhat provisional, presumably due to mutual lack to trust.  For the Republic of Ireland based pilots, the proposals involve payments for flying on days off and commitment to a test of Ryanair style fixed days flying/off rosters next winter, with the details to be settled.  Belfast and Gatwick pilots came in on what seem separate issues related to resignations to join other carriers.  The proposed solutions are a loyalty bonus and more pay. With the dispute notice deferred to 1st July but not lifted hopefully there will not be a re-run of cliff-hangar negotiations.

Meanwhile Aer Lingus and its 1,400 cabin crew section are set for binding arbitration in a bid to secure a 'seasonality' agreement.  This could release an increment payment that the cabin crew had traded in an industrial relations deal that preceded the current 'Greenfield Agreement'.  Recently, on an emergency basis, the company brought back for the summer, through a recruitment agency, some cabin crew who had left under voluntary severance in recent years. A seasonality agreement with IMPACT, would facilitate arrangements to fill gaps in the roster in the future. Any new seasonal employees would be paid in line with full-time staff. Aer Lingus is to end the Shannon-Gatwick and Shannon-Paris services on 11^th September and 29th October respectively. Paris may return next summer. The Belfast-Las Palmas service, recently introduced, will not operate next winter. Aer Lingus is also looking to recruit extra staff including an Engineering Specialist (Aircraft Reliability), Aircraft Maintenance engineers, Manager In-Flight Service and Operational Delivery and Direct Entry First Officers based in Dublin Cork, Belfast, London-Gatwick.

Finally Aer Lingus latest traffic announced traffic statistics for the month of May which were published on 8th June. The year-on-year comparison of Aer Lingus’ booked passenger numbers in May 2011 was distorted by the eleven days in May 2010 when volcanic ash clouds prevented Aer Lingus from operating all of its scheduled flights. Total booked passenger numbers in May 2011 were 911,000, an increase of 4% compared to May 2010. Short haul booked passengers were 832,000, a 4.4% increase on May 2010, while long haul booked passengers in May 2011 were 79,000 equal to May 2010. The booked load factor in May 2011 decreased by 4.7 points on May 2010 to 74.6%. Short haul booked load factor was 75.1%, a decrease of 4.9 points on May 2010, with capacity increasing by 10.6% due to the impact of the ash clouds in May 2010. Long haul booked load factor was 73.6%, a decrease of 4.3 points on May 2010, with capacity increasing by 6.6% due to the impact of the ash clouds in May 2010. Booked load factor in May 2010 was inflated by customers disrupted due to the ash cloud, re-booking their flights multiple times. Aer Lingus Regional’s total booked passenger numbers in May 2011 were 69,000, an increase of 86.5% compared to May 2010.