DISRUPTIONS caused by a two-hour strike by Cyprus Airways (CY) pilots were kept to a minimum yesterday, the airline said, but the possibility of a longer strike on Thursday is still hanging in the balance.
A crucial meeting is to take place today between pilots’ union PASIPY and CY management to try and avert a new stoppage. Pilots want the company to stop giving its routes over to charter subsidiary Eurocypria in the wake of the withdrawal of two of CY’s Airbus A320s as a cost-cutting exercise. The move is due to leave 14 pilots redundant, two of whom have left the company. PASIPY wants the other 12 to retain their jobs.
Six flights and 1,500 passengers were affected by yesterday’s work stoppage, but disruption was kept to a minimum as passengers had been informed beforehand, CY spokesman Tassos Angelis said.
“Everything went according to schedule,” he said. “There were some delays of between two and three hours.”
Angelis said a meeting would be held today with the pilots, possibly with the participation of the Labour Ministry’s mediation service, in an effort to avoid further strike action.
PASIPY chief Efthymios Liasis told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the problem of CY giving flights over to Eurocypria had been going on for 10 years and that an agreement reached four years ago with the company on the issue had not been kept by management.
He said that since November 1, CY had given the Warsaw and Birmingham flights to Eurocypria but that they had managed to have the latter route returned to CY. Two more routes, Budapest and Frankfurt, were also slated to be given to Eurocypria in the next few days, he said, denying claims by CY that only one route had been given to the charter firm.
“We want them to stop giving our routes to other companies,” Liasis said. He also said PASIPY wanted the company to stop discussing the redundancies of pilots.
“We are meeting at the ministry tomorrow and we hope we will find a solution,” he said. “If we don’t our next move will be a seven-hour stoppage on Thursday.”
Later yesterday, Liasis and Angelis exchanged barbs during a news programme on state television. The PASIPY chief accused the CY spokesman of being “clueless” as to the issue concerning the pilots, and accused him of using political connections to land his job at the airline. Angelis is a former journalist with AKEL mouthpiece Haravghi.
In response, Angelis asked Liasis to account for his whereabouts in 1974, under what circumstances he left the island then, how he came back, and how he got back into Cyprus Airways.
CY has been attempting unsuccessfully to thrash out an agreement with the unions for weeks with the mediation of the Labour Ministry, following the implementation of an action plan to save the ailing carrier.
The airline reported losses of £30 million for the first half of this year and the action plan was designed to return it to the black by the end of 2005.
