Icelandair to fireplace all flight attendants and make pilots do their careers

• Icelandair, the island nation’s flag provider, announced Friday that it would be laying off all its flight attendants.
• Starting Monday, Icelandair’s pilots will suppose flight attendants’ roles, the corporation reported.
• The legality and practicality of having pilots act as flight attendants are unclear.
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Icelandair announced Friday that it would be laying off all its flight attendants, ending a labor dispute with the crew members’ union that commenced past month.

In the unprecedented move, the airline reported it prepared to have its pilots briefly believe flight attendants’ roles overseeing the basic safety of these onboard, setting up July 20.

“Icelandair will permanently terminate the work of its present cabin crew customers and completely discontinue the employment romance among the events,” Icelandair said in a statement.

But pilots won’t be expending substantially time pushing carts down the aisle and handing out beverages and foods.

Expert services “will proceed to be at a minimum, as (they have been) due to the fact the effects of COVID-19 started off,” the airline stated.

Flight attendants enjoy a crucial job in preserving in-flight basic safety, notably in the case of an emergency. It can be not clear how a pilot could efficiently believe a flight attendant’s role, particularly with just two days’ discover.

It is also not clear if such a setup is legal in the regions in which Icelandair flies, together with the US and the European Union.

In the US, flight attendants need to full a variety of trainings to become a qualified crew member.

Delta flight attendants, for case in point, go via a two-thirty day period schooling in which they are drilled on subjects which include swimming, CPR, and how to evacuate an aircraft inside 90 seconds.

Reps for the airline, the Cabin Crew Affiliation of Iceland, the Icelandic Transport Authority, and the European Union Aviation Protection Agency did not immediately respond to Business enterprise Insider requests for remark.

As the airline is not an American carrier, the Federal Aviation Administration does not have regulatory authority around it, an FAA spokesperson said. 

Icelandair, like the relaxation of the airline market, has noticed passenger numbers collapse considering the fact that the coronavirus pandemic essentially shut down intercontinental travel earlier this calendar year.

In May possibly 2019, 419,000 travellers flew on Icelandair. In May perhaps 2020, just 3,100 hopped aboard.

Very last thirty day period the airline declared a economical restructuring, aiming “to safe current operations, reinforce the liquidity and make certain the long term competitiveness of the Firm.”