Hotels locally are among those impacted by the impending action by Aer Lingus pilots.
Irish Air Line Pilots’ Association (IALPA) members seeking a 24% pay increase from the airline are set to stage a work-to-rule from tomorrow with an eight-hour strike on Saturday.
Both sides will attend separate meetings at the Labour Court today in a last-ditch attempt to ward off action.
Colin Ahern of the Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel says he and his colleagues are already seeing the knock-on effects to their transatlantic market, noting; “We are seeing cancellations, indeed we’ve had a number of cancellations here already and I know that other hotels in Kilkenny and across Ireland have seen significant cancellations, particularly from the north American visitors; Aer Lingus have 65% of all available transatlantic seats into and out of Ireland so that’s a significant portion that’s being affected whereas for the short-haul Irish people tend to have more choice”.
He’s sure those who were due to come here, will go elsewhere as opposed to picking new dates to visit Ireland, saying; “They will go and they will visit Scotland or they’ll visit France or they’ll visit wherever, they won’t hang on, they’ll go and take their holidays, certainly from a US market point of view, domestically it’s hard to know obviously some people are going to be affected and they will have holidays booked abroad and they won’t be able to get another flight that will suit them and it may mean some more Irish people will choose to stay at home this summer but I still think there’s plenty of choice, there’s plenty of ways of getting out of the country if that’s what people really want to do”.
Mr Ahern has the following plea; “All parties, including the Government, need to understand the importance of getting in and out of our island country, tourism is one of the biggest domestic industries that we have, we employ somewhere in the region of 270,000 people on this island and anything that affects that during the summer period needs to be dealt with immediately, we have the structures in place around labour law and negotiation and all that, they’re all there, and we need to use those structures to come to an agreement that suits everyone”.
