“I am pleased that we have now agreed with all four pilot associations in SAS Scandinavia and that the strike has ended. Finally, we can resume regular operations and fly our customers on their long-awaited summer vacations. I deeply regret that so many of our passengers have been affected by this strike, “said Anko van der Werff, President and CEO, in a press release.
“The pilots have secured important breakthroughs. 450 pilots who were laid off during the corona pandemic have been guaranteed re-employment and the pilot associations’ collective agreements will also apply to the new companies SAS Connect and SAS Link,” the pilot association SAS Pilot Group (SPG) writes in a press release.
The announcement of the agreement comes after SAS provided conflicting information on Monday evening. At 9 pm, SAS Chairman Carsten Dilling stated that the parties had agreed.
This was rejected a short while later by SAS’s communications manager Karin Nyman.
Negotiations between the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish pilot associations and SAS’s management have been ongoing since November last year, but the parties have not been able to reach an agreement. The pilots’ old collective agreement expired at the end of March.
On June 9, the pilot unions submitted their strike notice to the Mediation Institute. The mediation has been going on since 13 June but was stopped on 4 July when the SAS pilots gave the message that they would go on strike with immediate effect.