In yet another round of air-travel related strikes in Spain, pilots at Spanish airline Iberia announced today they would be holding two days of strike actions this month – on December 18th and December 29th. Both strikes are planned to protest the planned opening of a new budget airline branch of Iberia. The airline, to be called Iberia Express, will set out on its first flights in April, 2012.
Iberia pilots are worried Iberia Express will make them, the larger airline, have less importance in the eyes of the IAG consortium which the company is part of, along with British Airways. Iberia Express will also be taking over some of the short-haul flights, which isn’t sitting well with pilots either.
Sad to say though, in today’s Spain, with the economy the way it is, while you can definitely understand their concerns and sympathize, you’d think these Spanish pilots would at least be happy to have jobs. Instead, they’ve decided to dwell on the possibly-negative instead of the presently-positive. And that’s a shame.
The only saving grace to the strike actions though is pilots chose two days to strike before and after the Christmas holidays when they’ll have the least negative impact to travelers. They reckon only about 10 percent of flights will be affected too.