Airline sacks all cabin crew, asks spare pilots to attend passengers

The national airline of Iceland, Icelandair, has decided to ‘permanently terminate the employment of its current cabin crew members’ and asked spare pilots to work as crew staff in the routine flights ‘for safety on board’.

The decision was taken Icelandair management after the failure of negotiation with the Icelandic Cabin Crew Association over new contracts in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The two sides had signed an agreement for five years which involved increasing productivity and flexibility.

 

It emerged that the airline signed similar deals with the pilots and engineers’ unions, however, the cabin crew voted against the proposals by a majority of 73:27 over a week ago.

Icelandair announced its decision to “permanently terminate the employment of its current cabin crew members and permanently discontinue the employment relationship between the parties” besides exploring other options for ensuring the safety and service onboard its aircraft.

Moreover, the Iceland national carrier was also seeking new cabin crew and is reportedly to be in talks with staff who lost their jobs when Wow Air collapsed in 2018, Independent.co.uk reported.

In order to resist the airline’s decision, the cabin crew union threatened to begin a strike at once.