After hundreds of passengers suffered from disruptions to El Al flights last night, this morning too travelers will bear the brunt of the escalating struggle between El Al's management and its pilots' committee. The airline has cancelled this morning's flight of low-cost unit UP to Berlin and the El Al flight 007 to New York.
The airline has announced that flight 315 to London will depart on a leased plane. "Despite calls to dozens of pilots to man the flights, all the management's attempts to crew the aircraft with the company's pilots have come to nothing. We apologize to passengers," the company's announcement said.
Last night, the flight to Beijing was postponed and will take off only this morning. Another three flights were cancelled or transferred to leased aircraft.
El Al claims that the pilots have decided to escalate their campaign. "We condemn this behavior, which harms passengers and other El Al employees -flight attendants, ground crew, and maintenance workers who have to bear the consequences of the wild actions of the pilots, headed by Nir Tzuk. We apologize to passengers for the inconvenience and we are determined to return the airline's operations to normal."
The airline again published a "shaming" list of captains and first officers who refused to man flights, such as:
"11. At 16:08 refused. 16:42 was required to report for duty, notified that he had drunk alcohol."
The El Al Pilots Association said in response, "This evening we have had to sustain delay in the El Al flight to Beijing because of the conduct of El Al's management and the Clubmarket gang headed by Tami Mozes-Borovitz. One pilot is lacking and there are 6-10 first officers and at least another six captains prepared to crew the flight and to return immediately in order to continue with their monthly rosters, including the fleet manager, a member of the company's senior management.
"However, the imperviousness of the company to reason and its failed management mean that hundreds more passengers will be harmed. A CEO who earns NIS 5 million and who perpetrates this in a record year for the airline is not worthy of his position."
Tamar (Tami) Mozes-Borovitz is chair of El Al. Clubmarket was a supermarket chain controlled by the Borovitz family that went into liquidation.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 20, 2016
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