STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Wage talks between Scandinavian airline SAS and its pilots collapsed on Monday, SAS’ chief executive told reporters, triggering a strike that will paralyse large parts of the embattled carrier’s operations.
“This is very bad news,” SAS CEO Anko van der Werff told reporters.
Close to 1,000 pilots in Denmark, Sweden and Norway will join the strike, according to the unions, which SAS had said could leave some 30,000 passengers stranded each day.
“The strike yields cancellations across the flight schedule and thousands of travellers are affected,” SAS said in a statement. “A strike at this point is devastating for SAS and puts the company’s future together with the jobs of thousands of colleagues at stake,” it said.
The strike comes at a difficult time for loss-making SAS as it seeks to restructure its business by undertaking large cost cuts, raising new cash and converting debt to equity as part of a plan to rescue the carrier from collapse.
SAS said it estimated the strike would to lead to the cancellation of around 50% of all scheduled SAS flights and impact around 30,000 passengers per day. Unions have earlier estimated the number could be as high as 45,000.
The carrier last month averaged 58,000 passengers per day and serves destinations in Europe, Asia and the United States.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; editing by Niklas Pollard)
