Finland’s flag carrier said its agreement to wet lease two aircraft for its Asian network could be terminated, eliminating 90 pilot jobs.
A Finnair Airbus A330 (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Katie Zera)
Finnair has warned it may furlough nearly one-tenth of its pilots with new contract negotiations between the airline and its pilots union beginning on Wednesday.
Finland’s flag carrier and the Finnish Air Line Pilots Association (SLL) have been negotiating a collective agreement for over five months now, with Finland’s National Conciliator’s Office also mediating the ongoing negotiations since November 2024.
“The negotiations have not yielded results, and the pilot union has rejected several settlement proposals that the employer would have accepted,” Finnair stated in an online news release published on Friday.
Finnair says SLL is reluctant to collectively agree on having stand-by duty in the collective agreement, so the carrier has opted to include it in the employment contracts of its pilots.
“…[T]he pilot union has refused to agree on stand-by duties collectively and proposed that stand-by should always be voluntary,” the airline stated. “For decades, stand-by duty has been part of the collective labour agreements for Finnair pilots. The stand-by duty is an essential part of ensuring reliable operation of flights at airlines.”
“Stand-by is an established practice in the industry and I believe that every Finnair pilot recognizes it as part of their job,” said Finnair Chief People Officer Kaisa Aalto-Luoto, in the release. “As the union has declined to agree on this, we are now preparing to include stand-by duty in the employment contracts of all pilots in order to secure regular and reliable flight operations.”
Finnair could furlough a maximum of 90 pilots during negotiations on Wednesday. The carrier stated that two of its Airbus A330 aircraft have had limited range in Finnair’s Asian network after Russia’s airspace was closed in 2022.
By wet leasing the aircraft to Qantas for routes between Sydney, Bangkok, and Singapore, Finnair said it was still able to put these aircraft to use that employed approximately 90 pilots.
Now the airline is saying its ability to operate these flights has been hindered by SLL’s extended industrial action, which includes a stand-by ban for flights operated by the partner carrier.
A termination of the carriers’ agreement, which Finnair says is currently on the table, would have a direct impact on the amount of work available to Finnair’s pilots, the airline stated.
“It is sad that the pilot union’s prolonged industrial action has led to a situation where we have to start change negotiations,” Aalto-Luoto said in the release. “Today is a tough day for all of us at Finnair. In our 101 years of history, we have never needed to reduce pilot positions due to operational reasons. Even when the Russian airspace closed and fundamentally changed our operating environment, we succeeded in securing employment for our pilots with collaboration arrangements.”
AirlineGeeks reached out to SLL for comment.
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