Union cynical over no-smoking pilot scheme on Cyprus Airways

By Jean Christou

CYPRUS Airways’ (CY) cabin crew will today decide on what measures to take to counteract plans for smoking-free flights to Athens and London Heathrow, which are due to start on Monday.

The company’s largest union Cynika, and some 200 of its former members who have set up a breakaway union, met yesterday with the Labour Ministry to discuss the issue.

Cabin crew are outraged that pilots would be excluded from the scheme under management’s plans because the cockpit is an enclosed space and cut off from passengers.

Cynika is calling management’s move a form of discrimination and has vowed to fight the smoking ban unless it applies throughout the aircraft.

The original plan to introduce the scheme on flights to Athens and London went up in smoke late last year because of the dispute.

At the time, the airline decided to avoid trouble coming up to the busy Christmas season and postponed the trial period, but this week it announced it would be coming into force as of Monday.

The new two-month trial period will begin on the two routes from January 25 and will run until March 28.

Cynika chairman Costas Demetriou said yesterday’s meeting at the Labour Ministry was attended by union, management and government mediators.

“Even the Labour Ministry pointed out to the company that they would have problems if smoking was not banned on the entire flight,” Demetriou said.

The decision to ban smoking on the flights was reached after Cyprus Airways ran a questionnaire in which 90 per cent of passengers said they would prefer non-smoking flights.

But two months ago Cynika said that even if pilots are included in the ban, its members may still refuse to accept the non-smoking package.

Management wanted to run the scheme among regular passengers in order to obtain feedback on a trial basis before introducing it permanently.

The airline has repeatedly said that there were no plans to stop pilots from smoking, but Cynika is not likely to resort to strike action over the matter, the union said.

It already plans a four-hour strike on January 28 over pay rises.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.