Total chaos for SAS traffic on Friday if pilot mediation doesn’t succeed

SAS cancels 100 departuresSAS airlines. Photo: SAS

Mediation is underway for SAS Airline pilots in Norway, Sweden and
Denmark. From Friday morning, there will be flight chaos if they cannot find a solution.

Although Easter tourists escaped a possible strike, it will have major
consequences for travellers next weekend if the aircraft that are flown
by the Nordic pilots remain on the ground.

‘’We hope that we will come to a solution. It is too early to say how it might affect flights’’ said information manager, Knut Morten Johansen of SAS.

In Norway, so-called ‘’space withdrawal’’, i.e., a strike, has been announced possible for about 550 pilots. Altogether, there are about 1,500 SAS pilots in the three countries that could end up in a conflict that will affect large parts of the air traffic of the company.

Conflict over watchlists

The conflict is about, among other things, predictability related to watchlists and weekends.

An SAS pilot does not normally know when and for how long they will be working during the next month. They have a job-free weekend per month, but it can also happen that they work for seven consecutive weekends. In addition, SAS have terminated two other key agreements they had with their pilots. One concerns predictability in career development and seniority, and the other is about the division of roles in different shifts.

‘’There has been a great divergence of opinion. We hope that SAS will revise its position with, among other things, the terminated agreements so that we can come to an agreement before the mediation deadline” said Jan Levi Skogvang of the Norwegian Pilot Association in Parat.

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today

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