Pilots for Allegiant Air, one of the primary airlines serving the Quad City International Airport, announced they will go on strike Thursday, April 2, 2015. The strike has the potential to ground more than 250 flights, impacting more than 33,000 customers, on the first day alone.
“The strike comes as Allegiant refuses to reestablish a prior scheduling system and restore other basic benefits that have been illegally rolled back over a two-year period,” said a statement on the Teamsters Local 1224 website, announcing the strike. Allegiant pilots voted in January 2015 to authorize a strike.
“Sadly, this irresponsible action has been timed to disrupt many of your holiday travel plans and will likely affect flights in and out of all our destinations,” said a statement issued by Allegiant Air.
The pilots complained of “concerns at the airline, including operational problems that lead to the delays and cancellations that have made Allegiant one of the least popular airlines in the travel industry,” the Teamsters website said. The group called the airline’s pilot scheduling system “haphazard.”
Allegiant called the strike “illegal.”
Allegiant announced they would make operations decisions on a daily basis, and passengers were encouraged to sign up for flight alerts from them online – click here. "If you have a reservation on a flight scheduled April 1–7, 2015, you may change to any other flight in the current Allegiant schedule with no additional fee," said Allegiant's online post about the strike. They warned that those changes should be made online only (click here) and that passengers should not expect airport agents to be able to make those changes.
"If you have a reservation on a flight scheduled April 1–7, 2015, and you do not check in or board (“no-show”) your flight, you will receive an automatic refund. You don’t need to take any action in order to receive your refund," the Allegiant post said. "Based on your Allegiant reservation, all flight segments, car, hotel and other product reservations booked through Allegiant will be canceled and refunded."
An Allegiant flight from Punta Gorda, Florida, scheduled to arrive at 9:20 a.m. Thursday morning, as well as a 10 a.m. departure to Punta Gorda, still showed as "scheduled" Wednesday afternoon, April 1, on the Quad City International Airport website.