FERMANAGH holidaymakers were left worrying about their vacations in the sun after Aer Lingus was forced to cancel hundreds of flights this week due to industrial action by pilots.
Approximately 270 flights are due to be cancelled from today to Tuesday, July 2 as a result of industrial action by pilots, with around 40,000 passengers going to popular destinations such as Spain, Portugal and Croatia impacted.
The Irish airline will start informing passengers this week about planned cancellations and the emails no one wants to get are likely to continue landing in inboxes throughout the week.
The airline said it will have to cancel between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of flights in the first five days of a work-to-rule by members of the Irish Airline Pilots Association.
“People need to keep a close eye on the Aer Lingus website and their email accounts as it’s unclear what the cancellations will be,” Richard Cooper of Carefree Travel in Enniskillen said.
“Customers will be given the option to change their flights for free for up to 90 days or cancel their flight and claim a full refund.
“Aer Lingus are also quite a big airline. They have sister airlines like American Airlines, British Airlines and Iberia who will be accommodating customers travelling on affected routes.
“So they are putting plans in place, but it’s hard to know exactly how much disruption there will be, these things tend to get sorted out.
“For the last 30 years, the French air traffic controllers have been on strike in July and August, but most people generally still get on holidays.”
The key routes for Aer Lingus are the transatlantic routes. Tickets cost a lot more than most of the short and medium-haul routes. The planes also carry far more passengers.
Other key routes will be the so-called trunk routes to the busiest airports in southern Europe at the height of the holiday season, the likes of Faro on the Algarve in Portugal, Malaga on the south coast of Spain and Barcelona further north. The airline will try hard to protect those routes.
There is a good chance travellers can expect compensation. While strikes by baggage handlers or air traffic controllers are considered extraordinary circumstances beyond the control of Aer Lingus, internal industrial action is not, which means compensation due under EU regulations must be paid.
The amount of compensation payable depends on the distance of the flight. If the flight is classed as short haul, the amount payable is €250 (£212) per person. It is €400 for a medium-haul flight and €600 per person for long haul.
To get a sense of the distances, Dublin to Paris is short haul, Dublin to Barcelona is medium-haul and Dublin to New York is long haul.
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