Tomorrow, Friday 24 July, numerous Alitalia flights could be canceled or suffer severe delays due to one 24-hour strike proclaimed by Anpac, the union of Italian pilots and flight attendants.
The strike will start at 00.01 and will last throughout the day on Friday. Pilots and flight attendants of the Anpac union will cross arms throughout Italy with the exception of Bologna and Venice. Thus, there will be many inconveniences for Alitalia users. The company has already made it known that it already has canceled 15% of flights scheduled for tomorrow. These are mainly short and medium-haul flights. There will be no cancellation, however, for travel to North America, South America and the Far East.
In a press release, Alitalia recommends all passengers departing tomorrow to "check the status of their flight before going to the airport by consulting the 'Info Flights' section of the Alitalia website" or by contacting the toll-free number 800.650055. "Passengers affected by cancellations - reads the Alitalia press release - have the right to be rerouted to alternative Alitalia flights, modifying their booking by 30 July, or to a full refund of the ticket".
Why are Alitalia pilots and air traffic controllers on strike?
Il Anpac trade union believes that the company does not want to maintain "the employment levels of seagoing personnel" so much so that there is talk of about a thousand redundancies by 2016. In a statement Anpac explains that the strike was called for "lack of concrete answers to the legitimate requests of colleagues CityLiners who have the right, sanctioned by the contractual agreements, to obtain a correct homogenization of their remuneration system with that of their Alitalia colleagues and to the company refusal to put on paper the commitment to maintain the employment levels of the Flight Crew at the end of the SOD ”.
For its part, Alitalia responds considering “the reasons for the strike given by the Anpac union as specious as an agreement was reached on 21 July with important improvements with 6 union organizations on Cityliner. Furthermore, the hypothesis of the 1.000 redundancies in 2016 is the result of pure fantasy and devoid of any substance".
