Qantas passengers are facing their third day this week of severe disruptions to travel plans with a strike on Friday by licensed engineers’ union to affect over 7,600 passengers from 17 flight cancellations and 32 flight delays.
Rugby fans travelling from Sydney to New Zealand for the World Cup semi-final could face delays of more than three hours, the airline warned.
The strike, which will take place between 4pm-8pm in Sydney, comes after the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA on Monday cancelled a strike just hours before it was to commence and causing chaos to the travel plans of 11,000 people.
Strikes today by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the strike tomorrow from the ALAEA will bring the total number of passengers impacted since unions started action to around 60,000.
The misery for passengers has been compounded by Customs workers walking off the job for one hour at Sydney from 7am (AEDT), again at 9am (AEDT) and for two hours at 7pm (AEDT).
Customs workers at Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, the Gold Coast and Cairns held similar stoppages through the day.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said, “We now have the pilots’ union, the licensed aircraft maintenance engineers union and the Transport Workers’ Union all ramping up their coordinated industrial campaign against Qantas.
“They want to be paid to do work that no longer exists due to the advent of new aircraft.
“They want to retain outdated work practices. They want to tell us what we can and can’t change.
“Effectively they are trying to dictate how we run Qantas – whether it is the pilots’ union demanding the right to dictate pilot pay rates in Jetstar, or the licensed engineers demanding a veto on the modernisation of work practices, or the TWU wanting to limit our use of contractors.â€
