Flights cancelled for stop-work

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 3

Flights cancelled for stop-work

PA Wellington Air New Zealand will cancel 30 domestic flights on Monday morning while Wellington Airport loaders attend a stopwork meeting. Some 1500 passengers will be affected and Air New Zealand said the disruption was “disturbing and unnecessary.” An airline spokesman said that the Engineers’ Union had advised that the meeting would start at 9 a.m. and continue for three hours. The union notice

gave no reason for the meeting, he said. The secretary of the Wellington branch of the union. Mr Brian Landers, said earlier yesterday that the meeting would discuss manning levels, overtime and roster organisation. Because the meeting would take place off the airport, the airline anticipated disruption from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. The spokesman said that every effort would be made to get affected passengers to their destinations as speedily as

possible after the meeting and he emphasised that only services to and from Wellington were involved. The airline expected normal operations to resume by 1 p.m. Five early-morning flights from Wellington would go as scheduled — to Nelson, Palmerston North, Christchurch, Auckland and Hamilton — and five later Wellington-bound flights would be diverted to Palmerston North with their passengers going on to Wellington by bus.