Pilots at Finnish flag carrier Finnair will refuse to work overtime and will reject standby callouts in the run-up to Christmas after they dismissed a settlement offer proposed by a national mediation service to end an ongoing dispute over wages and working conditions.
On Wednesday, Finnair warned that it might be forced to cancel flights at short notice during the busy Christmas holiday period as a result of the standby ban announced by the Finnish Air Line Pilots’ Association.
“During the standby ban, pilots will not come to work from on-call shifts, so when a pilot falls ill, for example, on-call pilots are unavailable, and the flight has to be canceled,” the embattled airline explained in a statement.
The overtime and standby bans are in addition to a 24-hour strike set to take place on Friday. Finnair has already been forced to cancel 150 flights on December 13, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded.
“Unfortunately, cancellations resulting from these industrial actions come at very short notice and disrupt our customer’s travel plans,” slammed Finnair’s chief operating officer Jaakko Schildt on Friday.
“Many foreign tourists come to Finland during Christmas and New Year, and possible flight cancellations will inevitably hurt Finland’s attractiveness as a winter travel destination,” Schildt continued.
Finnair and the pilot’s union have been in contract negotiations since August, and independent mediators got involved in the bargaining process in November in an attempt to iron out a deal.
The union wants Finnair to reverse efficiency savings that pilots agreed to voluntarily at the height of the pandemic when the airline’s long-haul business model of flying between Europe and Asia was almost completely decimated.
Finnair’s recovery was further hit by the closure of Russian airspace, but pilots say that the airline’s return to profitability is evidence that wages now need to be increased.
As recently as last week, the union said that negotiations had progressed in the last week and some major disagreements had been resolved but that a new cost-cutting initiative to outsource some flights to cheaper third-party pilots remained a sticking point.
“I hope that the negotiators will genuinely seek solutions at the negotiating table. Finnair’s operating environment has changed considerably as the Russian airspace is closed, and we must find solutions for this together,” continued Schildt on Wednesday.
“Finland needs flight connections and a competitive flag carrier. A competitive Finnair is key for ensuring future jobs both at Finnair and in the Finnish travel industry at large.”
On December 2, Finnair was hit by a short strike by ground workers at its Helsinki hub. The workers were protesting the suspension and investigation of two employees who had been accused of leaking confidential internal airline information to unauthorized outside sources.
The walkout lasted only two and a half hours, but it was still long enough to lead to a slew of flight cancellations and delays. Some flights also had to depart without passengers’ luggage onboard or catering.
Finnair said that sensitive customer data was not compromised as a result of the data breach.
