Strike plan spells trouble for Air New Zealand

By CATHY ARONSON transport reporter

Air New Zealand passengers face cancelled international and domestic flights in two weeks when pilots strike for a record two days.

About 500 of the national carrier's 650 pilots will not fly from 4am on Friday, July 19, to 4am the following Sunday in a protest against possible job losses and lack of career protection.

Air New Zealand is still booking flights in the hope of resolving the dispute.

The pilots are protesting against plans to surrender some Air New Zealand routes to its budget subsidiary, Freedom Air, thus cutting jobs for Air New Zealand pilots.

The collective contract expired on March 13 last year and Air New Zealand wants to save 15 to 19 per cent in pilot costs.

The Airline Pilots Association has been told Air NZ has 32 surplus pilots and the union fears more will go as it expands its subsidiary in the next five years.

Association spokesman Adam Nicholson said that to avoid job losses the pilots wanted the option to fly for Freedom Air as it expands.

But Air New Zealand would agree only on the basis that the pilots could be sold with Freedom, meaning that they would no longer be employees of Air New Zealand.

Mr Nicholson said 40 per cent of the pilots had more than 20 years' service and would lose loyalty benefits and career advancements. Freedom Air flies 737s only so pilots cannot move on to 767s or 747s.

"We don't care what colour the aeroplane is painted," Mr Nicholson said.

"From a pilot's point of view it's an aeroplane [and] it's owned by Air New Zealand - if someone's going to fly it it might as well be us.

"But the company wants to reserve the right to farm out all of their work to somebody else, leaving the pilots with no career structure and maybe no job."

Air New Zealand spokesman Mark Champion said pilot numbers would increase as international services expanded in the next year.

The airline was still cutting costs to recover from last year's near-collapse.

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