The company leased the Boeing 737 aircraft for its London and New York routes after an “abnormally” high number of its crews were absent Saturday due to illness, said Dionne Ligoure, a spoke-swoman for the Trinidad-based airline.
She declined to say how many people called in sick.
Curtis John, president of a union representing many BWIA employees, said the sick leave was not a co-ordinated sickout.
He said the aircraft lease was a pressure tactic to get workers to agree to a new contract before their current one expires in February 2007 οΎ— which BWIA denied. Trini-dad has repeatedly bailed out BWIA since passengers numbers fell off after the Sept-ember 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
In early 2003, BWIA laid off a quarter of its 2,400 workers in an attempt to recover, but the carrier has continued to struggle.
In other aviation news, Airbus said yesterday that it expects to be able to deliver only nine of its new superjumbo A380s next year, delivery delays it blamed on production-line bottlenecks.
Airbus said its delivery schedule was being pushed back by six to seven months, although it also said that it still expects to deliver the first A380 by the end of this year.
“The new delays are caused by industrial issues only,” the European aircraft maker said in a statement, citing bottlenecks with the plane’s electrical systems.
“Modifications of electrical systems and reworks have been necessary [and] progressively disturbing, the final assembly flow,” it said.
It predicted a shortfall of five to nine A380 deliveries in 2008 and “around five” in 2009. Airbus has struggled to hit deadlines since unveiling the massive A380 earlier in the year.
The Nassau Guardian
