El Al cancels all flights from Europe as labor dispute grounds pilots

All El Al flights from Europe to Israel, as well as three flights leaving Israel for Europe, were canceled Sunday amid an ongoing wage dispute between the largest Israeli airline and its pilots union.

Pilots are objecting to a wage agreement according to which aging pilots receive just 34 percent of their full wages between the ages of 65 and 67.

The cancellations affected eight flights, according to an announcement on the El Al website.

International aviation rules forbid airline pilots from flying international routes after age 65, but Israeli pilots don’t start receiving their pensions until the country’s retirement age of 67. How to compensate long-time pilots during that two-year gap has been the subject of an ongoing skirmish between El Al’s management and its pilots union.

Overnight Saturday, the airline said it had to cancel three outgoing flights, to Boston, New York and Moscow. On Sunday, El Al added the 5:15 p.m. flight to London, the 5:25 p.m. flight to Madrid and the 5:30 p.m. flight to Warsaw to the list of cancellations.

Flights from New York, Boston, Madrid, Warsaw and London were also canceled.

The planes’ grounding caused a cascade of cancellations down the flight schedule.

El Al confirmed in a statement late Saturday that the cancellations happened because pilots were continuing to strike despite an agreed-upon wage framework that averted a strike last month.

Ofer Aloni, a pilots’ union spokesman, insisted over the weekend the pilots were not striking, but simply were refusing to fly beyond their contractual requirements, indicating the flights were charters.

A court-approved agreement put the wages of the pilots in those last two years at some 34 percent of their regular wages, Army Radio reported Sunday.

“There shouldn’t be any confusion about this,” Aloni told Army Radio late Saturday. “We flew every flight we were assigned to, but with these unscheduled flights” – a reference to the three canceled overnight flights – “I have no motivation to go beyond [contractual requirements] when aging pilots are tossed aside like trash.”