Aer Lingus is to hire aircraft from Ryanair to provide cover for the 48-hour strike planned by its pilots for next Tuesday and Wednesday.
The airline confirmed it has leased two planes from its rival and largest shareholder. "Customers come first," said a spokesman for the airline. A Ryanair spokesman confirmed Aer Lingus had been offered planes. Neither airline would say if the planes would be crewed by members of the Irish Airline Pilots' Association (IALPA), which represents both Aer Lingus and Ryanair pilots. This is affiliated to the Impact trade union and is in dispute with Aer Lingus.
Ryanair, which this week increased its stake in Aer Lingus to more than 28 per cent, has been a vocal critic of the plan to move routes from Shannon to London Heathrow to Belfast airport that triggered the dispute. It has called an extraordinary general meeting of Aer Lingus to try and have the decision reversed. Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has branded the move "insane".
Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion said the strike was "wholly unnecessary" and would damage "all of our interests associated with the organisation". Impact is objecting to the plan to hire pilots for Belfast on inferior terms to Dublin-based pilots.
Mr Mannion said the airline had exhausted every option under State industrial relations machinery to resolve the dispute."I am calling on individual pilots in Aer Lingus, who have shown great loyalty to the organisation in the past, to please cancel the strike action for Tuesday and come back to work," he said.
He said the IALPA branch of Impact had not put to its members the terms of a report produced by industrial relations consultant Phil Flynn under the auspices of the Labour Court. This recommended the company should be allowed to recruit staff at new bases on local market rates.
Michael Landers, the assistant general secretary of Impact, said he was confident none of Aer Lingus's 500 pilots would accede to Mr Mannion's request. He said the union did not have difficulty with IALPA pilots working for Ryanair and in effect breaking the strike by Aer Lingus IALPA members.