Pi­lots have dis­missed so­cial me­dia re­ports of an im­pend­ing strike, de­scrib­ing the claims as “un­found­ed and mis­chie­vous”. 

The posts ac­cused sev­er­al mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) and a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment of­fi­cial of at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt air­line op­er­a­tions. They fur­ther al­leged that an emer­gency meet­ing of TTAL­PA pi­lots has been sched­uled for 2 pm yes­ter­day, claim­ing it was in­tend­ed to desta­bilise the coun­try through a so-called “sub­tle strike ac­tion”.

TTAL­PA, in a joint state­ment with the Avi­a­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers Union (ACAWU), con­firmed that a meet­ing was held be­tween the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of both unions. How­ev­er, they said the meet­ing was not con­vened to call strike ac­tion or to en­gage in any ac­tiv­i­ty that could threat­en na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. 

While no spe­cif­ic agen­da items were dis­closed, the unions said the meet­ing was in­tend­ed to demon­strate uni­ty and to pro­vide re­as­sur­ance and sup­port to their re­spec­tive mem­ber­ships amid un­cer­tain­ty with­in the avi­a­tion sec­tor. 

“The meet­ing was con­vened to demon­strate uni­ty, pro­vide re­as­sur­ance, and of­fer sup­port to our re­spec­tive mem­ber­ships dur­ing a pe­ri­od of sig­nif­i­cant un­cer­tain­ty and anx­i­ety with­in the avi­a­tion sec­tor,” ac­cord­ing to the state­ment. 

Both unions said they re­main com­mit­ted to con­struc­tive con­sul­ta­tion with em­ploy­ers and their mem­bers. They added that their pri­ma­ry fo­cus is the safe­ty, sta­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the avi­a­tion in­dus­try, which they said has a di­rect im­pact on job se­cu­ri­ty and the wider pub­lic in­ter­est.