Pilots planning stop-works

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 24

Pilots planning stop-works

PA Auckland Air New Zealand pilots who want to crew DCB freight aircraft plan stopwork meetings later this month.

The airline maintains it has insuffident of its own pilots to crew the freight services between Auckland and Los Angeles. The chartering of overseas aircraft and supplied crews for the freighter service started more than a year ago when Air New Zealand’s DCB was banned from United States air space because it did not comply with noise regulations.

The Airline Pilots’ Association has not set dates for the meetings in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, which will include both domestic and international pilots, but they will be this month or early next month.

The chairman of the Air New Zealand pilots’ council of the association, Captain Jerry Rees-Webbe, has saidthat pilots were concerned to inconvenience as little as possible passengers returning at the end of the school holidays. “We will have the meetings as late as possible in the holidays and we hope to be able to give a fortnight’s notice of the dates,” he said. “Whenever we meet, however, there is bound to be disruption to someone’s travel plans.” An Air New Zealand management spokesman said the airline might refer the dispute to the Aircrew Tribunal.

The Air New Zealand DCS now flies to Australia, Asia, and the Pacific. For the next three months the airline will charter an aircraft to make one North American flight a month.