Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

It's Wednesday the 26th of June and I'm afraid that means we are now into the latest bit of

industrial action in the aviation industry and this involves pilots working for air lingers and belonging to the Irish Airline Pilots Association.

They have now today begun an indefinite, strict work to rule in their pursuit of a pay claim.

In addition to that, they're also going to be walking out

on strike from 5am to 1pm on Saturday, 29th of June, and that will disrupt the start of

the school holiday exodus for many passengers and millions of people are booked to fly

on the Irish National Airline over the summer,

a number of those from the UK via Dublin to North America. So what's going on? Well, the Union wants

24% on wages and that is to make up for inflation since the last wage rise,

which the union says was five years ago. And to show you the strength of feeling, pilots voted

99% in favour of industrial action on a turnout of 89%. So that means pretty much everybody is signed up for that.

The union says that Aer Lingus have increased their profits by 400% in 2023, that the pay claim is absolutely affordable.

And they say that Air Lingus Management is insisting that pilots

quote, sell their working conditions in exchange for any increase in pay.

The union says we're absolutely not prepared to do that when Aer Lingus is making enormous profits.

The airline, meanwhile, I sense is not going to do anything, which is going to have any...

The airline, meanwhile, shows absolutely no sign of, as it were, caving into the demands,

as they would put it. They say that profitability levels in Aer Lingus are lowest in the whole

IAG group, that includes British Airways, Voiling of Spain, Iberia of

Spain. Profit margins are much lower than before COVID and therefore, well, here we are.

Continued investment in the business by AIG, i.e. the parent company, is looking challenging. We've already seen

...