Archive for April, 2009

a very long days work

{ April 30, 2009 @ 6:23 am } · { Uncategorized }
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 An unfortunate situation that happened today. Crew are on the 4th day of a four day trip away from friends and family and a familiar bed, and as they woke up at 4am this morning in Wellington, thescheduled wake up was 4.15am. they got up as per normal, to find a fax under the door with a rescheduled departure time the new wake up time was now to be 5.45am, for a 6.45am pickup. Because they were set to wake up for 4.15am, they were well awake for the scheduled time to depart, once they reached the Wellington  International Airport, they were further delayed for another hour, so the departure time was now 8.30am.

As they were waiting for the aircraft to arrive, The Inflight Service Manager called crew control in regards to catching their connecting flight from Sydney back to Auckland after their working duties. She spoke to Crew control and the coordinator at the time told her they would be catching a later flight with a scheduled departure at 15.30pm local time. For a scheduled arrival of 20:30 back to Auckland. So this day has turned into a 16.15 hour working day. By contract Zeal320 crew can only work for up to 16 hours in a disrupt.

They arrived in Sydney at 10.30 local time and discovered NZ704 was departing for Auckland at 11:30am local time, ground staff called crew control to organise transferring them onto that flight. They were then advised that they would not transfer them, due to ‘operational reasons’. They were told to contact the Cabin Crew Development Manager for more information upon this decision. They called the managers and there was no answer.

Turns out the crew working the aircraft home were strike breakers, for the Zeal320 dispute and so these Zeal crew were left at Sydney airportfor five hours after having already worked since 5am this morning. Then they had to argue with the Sydney Koru lounge just to come in and have a bite to eat and use the toilets.
another classic days work at Zeal

Air New Zealand employment dispute

{ April 30, 2009 @ 5:33 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Hi I’m Zealgirl, I’m starting this blog to let everybody know what it’s like to be a flight attendant for Zeal320., the Air New Zealand subsidiary company.

We’re currently involved in industrial action with Air New Zealand for better work and pay conditions, it’s been going on for seven months and there’s lots of highs with team work and standing strong and there’s lots of lows as our company treat us like second class employees, your welcome to come along for the ride