After a year of negotiations through a mediator and innumerable meetings and discussions, the board of directors of El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL) has approved a new work agreement between El Al's management and its pilots. The new agreement comes two weeks before the new flight time limitation (FTL) regulations binding on El Al take effect.
El Al has experienced quite a few disruptions of its flights in recent weeks, due among other things to difficulties in finding crews to man its flights. Now that the agreement has been signed, El Al hopes to improve its proportion of flights landing and taking off on time.
The FTL regulations, which restrict the working time of pilots on each flight and their total monthly hours, were adopted by the Civil Aviation Authority of Israel. The new regulations stipulate rules for pilots' rest in order enhance flight safety. For example, the rules state that a pilot must not spend more than 190 hours a month on his job, and that a pilot must have 36 consecutive hours of rest after a continuous week of work.
El Al's management and the company's pilots signed an agreement in February 2017 following a prolonged dispute between the parties. The labor agreement signed at the time focused on pilots obliged to stop flying at age 65, two years before the regular retirement age in Israel.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 15, 2018
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