To reduce the workload on staff, the management of Brussels Airlines is canceling 148 flights from the summer schedule. “The affected passengers will be given an alternative,” it sounds.
–
High voltage at Brussels Airlines, where a conflict between staff and management escalates and a possible pilot strike casts a shadow over the start of the important summer season. If the conflict with the pilots is more about pay, the cabin crew are mainly dissatisfied with the work schedules and say they are burdened by the high work pressure.
That is why the management is now taking a remarkable measure: 148 flights will be canceled in the coming summer season ‘to reduce the workload’, says spokesman Maaike Andries. This concerns 74 return flights to European destinations. By way of comparison, this summer there are 200 daily flights (round trip) scheduled with Brussels Airlines. “This will affect less than 1 percent of passengers,” said Andries. ‘We will proactively contact them and alternatives will be worked out, either with us or with partner companies.’
less frequent
No destinations will be deleted, but frequencies will be reduced. Brussels Airlines hopes to meet the demand from staff to reduce the workload, says Andries. “Such relief from the schedule comes at a cost, but we’re doing this because the staff has indicated it’s too heavy.”
The management had already put the proposal on the table on Tuesday in a reconciliation meeting with the union representatives, but there it fell on the cold stone at the unions, which have been saying for months that there is a staff shortage. The socialist union already suspects that flights should be canceled anyway due to the shortage, but the management firmly denies this.
• Reconciliation at Brussels Airlines failed
Swiss also cancels flights
Brussels Airlines is not the only airline that has to adjust the summer season. Swiss Air Lines (like Brussels Airlines, a subsidiary of Lufthansa), also announced on Tuesday that it would cancel flights. Reference is made there to a shortage of hands: not only among our own personnel, but also among ground and airport suppliers.
Swiss will cut five weekly flights between Nuremberg and Zurich between July and October, and in July and August the number of flights between Berlin and Zurich will be reduced from 48 to 44 per week, and between Stuttgart and Zurich it will go from 13 to 10. Swiss, led by Dieter Vranckx, the former CEO of Brussels Airlines, also cancels one long-haul flight between Zurich and San Francisco per week.
The staff shortage in the aviation sector is also visible elsewhere. In recent weeks there have been many delays and canceled flights at Schiphol airport and at various British airports as a result of the shortages. During the corona pandemic, staff were laid off en masse and now the sector is struggling to recruit new people.
• Chaos is the new normal at Schiphol
–
