Ireland tourist agencies lament ongoing turmoil at Aer Lingus

A work-to-rule by pilots in the Republic of Ireland combined with intermittent strike action – including today – have thrown travellers’ plans into chaos over the past week.

Whilst Belfast’s Aer Lingus operations are so far unaffected (because they are subcontracted to a firm called Emerald), some 172 flights had been cancelled in and out of Dublin alone between Saturday and Tuesday.

Then late on Friday afternoon, it axed a further 122 flights – the vast bulk of which were Dublin ones.

An Air Lingus passenger plane comes into land at Heathrow Airport

In short, the root of the dispute is that the pilots’ union (Irish Air Line Pilots' Association) wants a 24% pay hike.

Aer Lingus says it is willing to discuss a rise in excess of 12.5% but only pilots show extra “flexibility” and “productivity”.

Talks between the two sides had produced no let-up in the deadlock at time of writing.

Tourism Ireland, which is responsible for tourism across the entire island, said: “In 2023, around 36% of total inbound tourism revenue for the year was generated in the months of June, July and August.

"As an island destination, we know that direct, convenient and competitive air services are critical to achieving growth in inbound tourism, so any disruption in air services for our overseas visitors is regrettable and is likely to impact our tourism industry partners.

"We hope for all parties involved that a resolution will be found as soon as possible.”

And Tourism NI, which concentrates only on the Province, said: “At this point it is difficult to assess the impact this strike will have on visitors but given that Dublin is our main gateway for American visitors, undoubtedly it will have some effect."

IALPA said that chances of an additional strike beyond Saturday are high after talks in the long-running dispute over pay broke down on Thursday.

Representatives from Aer Lingus and IALPA met for negotiations aimed at resolving the bitter dispute, however after five hours of intensive talks both sides emerged saying they had not reached an agreement.

The work-to-rule began on Wednesday, with pilots refusing to work overtime, accept changes to set rosters or take on out-of-hours management requests.

In a statement on Friday, Aer Lingus said: “Details will be communicated to impacted customers. Details of the services impacted are set out on the Travel Advisory page of aerlingus.com. These customers will be given the option to change their flights for free, to claim a refund or 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.”

IALPA president Mark Tighe said: “What we have is an obvious example of corporate greed from executives, who got a 66% increase in their payments, while we sit it in a very profitable company refusing to even offer a cumulative inflationary increase."