Flights were disrupted over the Easter weekend. The situation should be similar on April 23 and 24.
Bad surprise for French travelers who had decided to spend the Easter weekend in Spain by taking a flight from the Spanish low-cost company Volotea. A strike notice, filed by the National Union of Line Pilots (SNPL), came to obscure their stay. He called for a strike on the weekend of April 15 to 18, 2022 as well as that of April 23 to 24, 2022. The union criticizes the aircraft manufacturer’s policy which “continues to ask its employees to make great efforts to resist the consequences of the crisis, while refusing any social dialogue worthy of the name.»
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Result, many delayed or canceled flights. Worse, communication seems to have been faulty at best according to various testimonies reported by Europe1.
Passengers would thus not have received alternative proposals after the cancellation of their plane. Others would have seen their flight land in a city other than the initial destination (Nantes instead of Strasbourg). The rest of the journey is the responsibility of the passenger. Worse, the flight being less than three hours late, Volotea should not refund the tickets. “So since there was no cancellation and the delay is less than 3 hours, I can’t even ask for compensation. And when we contact them we arrive on error pages“says a passenger.
Cutting the salaries of flight personnel
The aircrew justifies this operation by the deterioration of working conditions. According to the press release from SNPL, “seafarers are among the lowest paid on the market“. The latter agreed to cut their salaries by 25% and the co-pilots by 10%, to help the company get through the crisis. The measure ended at the beginning of the year but in March the management returned to the charge to ask for a new reduction in salary. “Except that the prospects for the year 2022 already far exceed the figures for the year 2019“, is indignant Christophe Hannot union representative SNPL, questioned by AFP.
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The management of Volotea did not wish to react. She just specifies to put “doing everything possible to minimize the impact of the strike movement on its operations“.