Tigerair expects pilot stoppage to have minimal impact

Tigerair Australia says it expects a work stoppage by pilots ahead of the Australia Day long-weekend to have minimal impact on passengers. The stoppage Friday means there will be no Tigerair flights before 9 am but the airline says affected passengers have already been booked on other flights. The stop work meeting has been organized by the  Australian Federation of Air Pilots and is part of a long-running pay dispute. It is expected to involve about 75 percent of the airline’s pilots between 5 am and 9 am. READ Virgin Australia opposes Qantas-Cathay codeshare. The meeting will be followed by lower-level industrial action that also has the potential to see flights canceled. This will involve pilots refusing to depart in aircraft with non-safety related defects between January 26 and  January 28. The action comes as anger mounts among the airline's pilots about pay negotiations that have gone on more than two years. The pilots argue they fly the same aircraft — Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 jets — as their counterparts at other carriers but this is not reflected in their employment conditions. The AFAP has also criticized what it says is an increasing reliance by the company on people working on their days off. "The current agreement is well below industry standards, both in terms of pay and conditions,'' AFAP senior industrial officer James Lauchland said. "Tigerair pilots are simply looking for a fair deal.” The union also noted that it gave Tigerair an additional two days' notice to allow it put in place contingencies to minimize inconvenience to passengers.   Tigerair wouldn’t comment on the issues behind the dispute but said contingency planning meant its entire flight operating schedule for Friday had been redesigned to minimize the impact on customers. “All customers have been re-accommodated on a Virgin Australia or Tigerair service within two to four hours, and have been directly notified earlier this week,’’ the airline said in a statement. It said it was continuing to negotiate a new enterprise bargaining agreement with pilots and looked forward to reaching “a mutually beneficial outcome as soon as possible”. Tigerair is a subsidiary of Virgin Australia and has a fleet of 15 aircraft. It is progressively moving from being an A320 operator to become a Boeing 737 airline.