Trade union for aviation technicians threatens with strikes at Transavia

The airline Transavia has until Thursday to prevent technicians from protesting. The first protests are scheduled for Friday if the company does not agree to the demands set by The Dutch Association of Aviation Technicians (NVLT). Work interruptions are likely to be one of the first forms of protest. "I cannot exclude that passengers are affected by this, for example, due to delays," said chairman Piet Visser.

According to him, 90 percent of the NVLT members agreed to the protests. According to Visser, Transavia is refusing to raise salaries sufficiently, which is needed to close the backlog on KLM and the technical labor market.

"Transavia denies the shortages of technicians, has no realistic plan to reduce the staffing issues, trivializes the outflow of colleagues and the dilution of knowledge and experience, and disputes the salary comparison with KLM. They also continue to hire expensive Contractors and outsource regular work, "the NVLT recently warned.

Transavia would say nothing about the issue when asked. "We are not going to respond in detail,” said a spokeswoman.

The budget airline has had to regularly cancel flights due to technical problems and the extension of major maintenance this year. There was insufficient capacity to replace this. According to the Travel Branch Association ANVR, travel organizations had to work every day searching for alternatives due to flight changes and last-minute cancelations at Transavia.