CYPRUS Airways (CY) may be heading towards a new crisis as disgruntled pilots meet today to discuss the situation in the airline, which they describe as a shambles.
Strike action has not been ruled out, pilots union PASIPY said yesterday.
The CY board, which was meeting late last night, has been at loggerheads with the pilots since the beginning of the year over different interpretations of what was agreed under a rescue plan to save the airline.
Early last month, pilots held a four-hour work stoppage to press their side of the dispute, but management failed to react. The stalemate was followed by an agreement to meet in the second half of the month, but pilots walked out after they were kept waiting for over an hour.
A new meeting was arranged for the first week of this month, where both sides exchanged their positions, according to PASIPY president Polis Economou.
“We left with the promise that they would look into the problems of the pilots within a week. Unfortunately, that time has passed and we still don’t know what is going on. We have had no response. There are no plans for a meeting now,” Economou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
Economou said the union had written an open letter to the public, published on Tuesday, telling them the way the company was going. “We have a feeling the company is forcing our hand to do something and then they will have an excuse to close the company and blame us,” he said.
Economou said CY was not implementing the strategic plan but rather pushing out some people while hiring others “connected with the political parties”.
“It’s all such a shambles and we know for a fact that even the board is divided,” said Economou. “They have different opinions of how to do everything and in the end they are not doing anything while the company is losing money.
“Cyprus Airways is like a ship without a captain.”
Economou said PASIPY’s executive committee would meet today and discuss the whole situation and “take some tough decisions”. “We are trying to avoid anything that will hurt Cyprus Airways but we cannot rule out anything at this moment,” he said.
At the end of February, CY announced that it had posted 2005 pre-tax losses of £25.03 million, lower than the £43.2 million pre-tax loss of 2004, but still highly damaging and earning the state-owned carrier the title of worst performing title on the Cyprus Stock Exchange for 2005.
