Buenos Aires – The 24-hour strike launched at midday Thursday by pilots and mechanics at Aerolineas Argentinas forced the cancellation of 38 flights and left some 10,000 passengers stranded, the carrier said.
Only 9,400 of the 19,500 passengers with tickets for Thursday travel on Aerolineas managed to reach their destinations, the airline said in a brief statement.
The unions representing the carrier’s pilots and technical staff, APLA and APTA, respectively, called the strike after a breakdown in negotiations with management about pay and working conditions at the country’s main airline.
APLA and APTA mounted a nine-day walkout in December that ended with a provisional accord brokered by the Argentine government. Included in the pact was a commitment by the unions not to stage any job actions for 90 days.
Thursday’s strike produced chaos at the domestic terminal in Buenos Aires and at Ezeiza International Airport on the capital’s outskirts.
After days of talks hosted by the Labor Ministry, the contract negotiations ended Wednesday night with union leaders speaking of a “complete failure.”
Aerolineas, meanwhile, accused APLA and APTA of raising entirely new issues in this week’s session, and said that its own proposal of March 1 “resolved in a favorable manner” most of the unions’ original demands.
Once state-owned, Aerolineas Argentinas is now operated by the Spanish tourism group Marsans.
