A request for a warrant of prohibitory injunction by Air Malta against ALPA has been temporarily upheld by the Law Courts and is based upon a recently registered industrial dispute, the Airline Pilots Association said in a statement.

This mainly revolves around the fact that Air Malta management suspended a flight crew member without just cause and even threatened him with dismissal. Following his suspension, the pilot was reinstated and is back to flying duties. No evidence of wrongdoing could be found. With this in mind, ALPA expects the removal of whoever took such an unjust and cowardly decision.  ALPA will not tolerate such abuses.

The current industrial dispute is also based on the fact that the company is suffering from a pilot shortage which does not allow it to man its current flight schedule. Air Malta is employing crew to fly on a roster to their maximum legal limits regularly.

This has led to an unprecedented level of fatigue being recorded through the official channels. The company was caught out attempting to despatch crew without their required minimum legal rest and trying to convince them to operate beyond their prescribed maximum duty limits.

The present roster practices involve crew being called on their OFF days to operate flights. This leads to possible illegal patterns requiring the intervention of the roster department, the crew themselves or ALPA, to identify Flight Time Limitation breaches and remove crew from their infringing duties.

ALPA held numerous meetings to implement mitigation measures however no tangible progress was registered. ALPA therefore issued recommendations to their members to not operate flights beyond their published rosters to avoid illegalities.

The Air Malta/ALPA Collective Agreement states that every crew member is entitled to a minimum of 104 off days per calendar year. For the end of this year Air Malta will be unable to meet this contractual obligation. Various meetings held with management to find a solution have proved unsuccessful. Until a solution is found the airline’s schedule for December is not assured, ALPA said.

ALPA said is disappointed to observe that Air Malta is withholding from re-establishing pilots’ loss of licence insurance so as to use this same insurance as a bargaining chip in the ongoing disputes. This insurance also forms part of the current collective agreement.