Finnair cockpit crew was on strike last week for two days (read more here), resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of flights.
After the strike, the pilot union decided to not allow standby or overtime duty that greatly affected Finnair flight activity and lead to many last minute cancellations, as I observed at the Helsinki airport on Tuesday (read more here).
You can access Finnair here.
Finnair’s Last Minute Flight Cancellations Due To Pilot Dispute
There is now a Christmas and New Year’s truce between Finnair and its Pilot Union. Pilots have again agreed to standby duty through January 5, and they can also work overtime through January 1.
Passengers can expect fewer flight cancellations and delays due to this over the two-week period this agreement covers.
Finnair’s Passenger Announcement:
Ban on pilots on standby and overtime will be suspended for the Christmas time
Ban on pilots on standby and overtime will be suspended for the Christmas time to support smooth travel during the holiday season
20.12.2024
Finnair and the Finnish Air Line Pilots’ Association SLL have agreed to suspend the pilots’ standby and overtime ban for Christmas time to support smooth travel during the holiday season.
Finnair and the Finnish Air Line Pilots’ Association SLL have agreed to suspend the pilots’ standby and overtime ban for Christmas time to support smooth travel during the holiday season. When the ban on standby and overtime is not in force, the risk of flight cancellations is significantly reduced.
The standby ban is on break from 20 December 2024 to 5 January 2025. The overtime ban will be on break from 20 December 2024 to 1 January 2025.
These industrial actions are related to the ongoing collective labour agreement negotiations between Service Sector Employers Palta and the SLL.
We are monitoring the situation closely and will update this page with new information. We do everything we can to ensure that important trips during the holiday season can be carried out as planned.
Conclusion
I am surprised that Finnair hid this information in its website’s “Passenger Announcement” section and didn’t issue a press release. I guess that they would rather not have the media cover their dispute with the pilot union that has ended up canceling a dozen or so flights per day when pilots have refused standby or overtime duty.
The negotiations continue, but at least now, Finnair passengers have a greater chance that their flights will operate during this extremely busy travel period around Christmas and the New Year. Let’s hope that the parties will come to an acceptable agreement for both.
I chatted with one of the crew members during my recent flight about what the deal was with outsourcing some of the cockpit jobs, as there are already Finnair flight attendants who speak neither of the two official languages of Finland (Finnish or Swedish) and are not even directly employed by the airline, but rather some temp agency.
Finnair would like to lower the language requirements of the cockpit crew so that there would not be a requirement to speak any other language than English, and there must be something else going on as well because why outsourcing of pilot jobs would have otherwise been mentioned.
