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Around 1,500,000 Amazon and DHL customers won’t get their packages on time, after 250 ABX Air pilots went on strike today, forcing the cancellation of 75 flights so far.

The pilots have pledged not to fly for ABX Air, the ATSG subsidiary that operates 45 flights a day for DHL and 35 for Amazon.

It is the first pilots’ strike in the US since 2010 and court papers reveal that some 20,000 end-customers will be affected every time a flight is cancelled.

The pilots claim ABX has been understaffed for nearly two years, resulting in pilots continuously being forced to work “emergency” assignments in their own time, and that ABX “illegally violates its contracts with pilots by not allowing them to take contractually obligated compensatory time for the forced extra work”.

At the end of last month, ABX Air filed a court action for relief under the Railway Labour Act, alleging that its pilots were “engaged in an unlawful campaign to exert economic pressure on ABX through various concerted efforts in order to coerce ABX to accede to their bargaining demands”.

It said: “Defendants’ concerted actions have resulted in ABX’s pilots accumulating a backlog of days off. As ABX pilots utilise these ill-gotten days off, ABX is experiencing an interruption to service through flight delays and cancellations. If left un-remedied, ABX will experience crucial flight failures within days.”

Ultimately, pilots at ABX and sister airline ATI want a new agreement, under which they have the same contracts, but ATSG says the two airlines are not the same.

But the current strike is allowable as ABX’s staffing model has depended upon crew members voluntarily bidding for open flying.

ABX keeps no crew members on staff to cover these open trips. ATSG claimed in its court case: “There is no other reasonable way in which to staff the daily, weekly and monthly variations in the volume of flying demanded by ABX’s customers.”

But the union claims ABX has been chronically short-staffed. By the end of June, 59% of captains and 48% of first officers had reached, or exceeded, their contractual six-day limit on emergency assignments. The union advised pilots to refrain from bidding for open flying, avoid answering their phones, schedule their days off and take other measures to enhance their chances of having some free time

ABX has had to provide “premium pay” for its pilots working this way, which reduced its pretax margins by about $6.5m in the third quarter, according to CFO Quint Turner.

“Those assignments also have significantly increased over the last several months, even as ABX has aggressively hired this year, increasing pilot headcount by about a third,” said CEO Joe Hete in an earnings call last month. While management anticipated it would be able to stop the premium pay in the fourth quarter, costs will likely rise even further as the airline may have to pay a penalty for delays – the threshold for both Amazon and DHL is 98% on time performance.

Mr Hete noted that “we anticipate [the court] will affirm ABX Air’s right to manage its scheduling during its growth phase”.

But the court essentially ruled in the pilots’ favour, saying the dispute must go through the System Board of Arbitration.

The judge said: “[ATSG] maintains that “ABX’s flight operations functioned adequately prior to the union’s surreptitious call for this job action. But that allegation is undermined by the fact that by the end of the first quarter of 2016, approximately 40% of ABX captains and 33% of its first officers had already been forced to fly the contractually allowed emergency assignments.

“Defendants maintain that the staffing shortage is the product of management’s refusal to adequately staff its operations. In fact, the union repeatedly questioned plaintiff’s staffing assumptions and pointed out that its bare-bone staffing model would cause long-term problems.”

Pilots at Atlas Air, Southern Air, Kalitta Air and Polar Air – all also in talks and having voted for strike action – have pledged not to cross ABX’s picket line. Management at those airlines will no doubt also be looking very closely at the situation as they ramp up operations and seek more pilots.

An Amazon spokeswoman told The Loadstar: “We work with a variety of carriers and are confident in our ability to serve customers.”

DHL was not immediately available for comment.

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