Aer Lingus flights face some disruption tomorrow as a strike by more than 1,000 cabin crew goes ahead.
The airline said yesterday that it had managed to source additional aircraft, and a maximum of 19 flights out of the 200 scheduled would now be cancelled. All affected passengers would be reaccommodated on other flights, it said.
Hopes that the one-day strike might be averted faded yesterday.
The two sides are awaiting a Labour Court recommendation following talks last Sunday, but there was no indication that this would be available by tomorrow.
Impact, the union involved, has already refused a request by the court to call off the action pending the issuing of its recommendation.
A further one-day strike is planned for Monday, threatening serious disruption on the final day of the bank holiday weekend.
The dispute is over new work practices the airline is seeking in return for a 4 per cent increase which was "frozen" last year as part of the company's survival plan.
A further 3 per cent rise due under Sustaining Progress has also been delayed because of the row.
Members of all other Aer Lingus unions have agreed to changes in their areas and are being paid the increases.
Impact, however, has accused the airline of putting new demands on the table, which would result in cabin crew doing more flights, losing meal breaks and losing money.
Aer Lingus accused the union of wanting to stop the company's transformation into a low-fares airline that had launched 28 new routes over the past two years.
It claimed the union was "determined to stop customers availing of still lower fares and more new routes".
This was angrily denied by an Impact official, Ms Christina Carney, who said cabin crew had delivered "massive" productivity improvements against a background of substantial job losses over the last two years.
Productivity already delivered by cabin crew included 600 redundancies, reduced numbers of crew on flights, deferment of pay rises and the loss of annual pay increments worth €850 a year, she said. A number of those concessions were agreed as part of the survival plan last year, which turned the airline's fortunes around.
Impact, however, rejected a Labour Court recommendation in July on the concessions to be made by crew in return for the 4 per cent rise which had been frozen as part of the plan.
The issues included the commission to be paid to staff for operating a pay-bar, and a requirement that they tidy aircraft.
However, Ms Carney said the tidying issue had been resolved, when the airline put forward a new demand that a 25-minute "turnaround time" for aircraft be built into staff rosters.
This would result, she said, in crew flying to London and Paris and back without a break.
A spokeswoman for Aer Lingus said the 25-minute turnaround time was fundamental to the airline's low-fares agenda and had been proposed as early as last year.
Cabin crew, she added, would continue to be rostered for a 70-hour fortnight as normal.
The company's chief operations officer, Mr Séamus Kearney, said it was determined to ensure that customers would not suffer disruption "through this needless industrial dispute".
