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CAL to restore 70 percent of services

CAL to restore 70 percent of services

CAL to restore 70 percent of services

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – China Airlines said service would return to 70 percent of a normal level after 5 p.m. Saturday following the end of the flight attendants’ strike.
Late on Friday, the airline reached an agreement with the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union which gave the employees most of what they had wanted. The union called an end to the strike, which had started at 0:00 a.m. Friday, but 62 flights still had to be cancelled Saturday.
After 5 p.m., at least ten flights would take off normally from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and one from Taipei Songshan Airport, the two main Taiwanese airports hit by the strike. Two flights between Taoyuan and Kaohsiung were also canceled however. Before 5 p.m., eight flights would have left as planned, CAL said, for a total of 19 flights taking off out of 81 scheduled.
The airline estimated that more than 10,000 passengers would be affected by the problems Saturday.
CAL said it was rearranging flight schedules and mobilizing foreign flight attendants from overseas. It also cooperated with other airlines in mobilizing aircraft to charter destinations such as Okinawa, Osaka and Fukuoka in Japan and Hong Kong.
The participants in the strike would return to normal work schedules beginning Monday morning, CAL said.
Passengers whose flights had been affected on June 24 and 24 would each receive a voucher worth US$100 (NT$3,200), the airline said, calling on flight attendants to return to work as early as possible.
After more than five hours of talks Friday, CAL agreed to a raise in overseas work subsidies from US$2 to US$5, though spread over two stages from July until May next year. Earlier, CAL Chairman Ho Nuan-hsuan, who was faced with the strike on his first day in office, had already given in on the union’s major demand, allowing flight attendants to register for work at Songshan instead of Taoyuan, as was the rule before June.