The International Maritime Employers’ Council (IMEC) has teamed up with the shipping industry’s two largest crew travel agencies in a bid to encourage airlines to lay on rescue flights to get seafarers home and onboard ships.
The move is an attempt to amalgamate the shipping industry’s crew travel requirements to produce enough volume for airlines to bring idle aircraft back into operation.
The lack of flights, because of travel restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, is a major stumbling block to getting crew home and onboard ships.
IMEC has teamed up with Global Marine Travel (GMT) and ATPI Marine and Energy in the initiative.
The tie up could potentially involve IMEC’s 250 member companies, including some of the largest shipping companies in the world, and another 150 employers from Japan and South Korea.
IMEC works closely with the International Mariners’ Management Association of Japan (IMMAJ) and the Korean Shipowners’ Association in negotiating the International Bargaining Forum (IBF) employment agreement. The IBF agreements cover more than a quarter of the world’s fleet.
IMEC chief executive Francesco Gargiulo said that demand from single companies of just 20 to 50 seafarers is not enough for airlines to restart services.
Gargiulo described GMT and ATPI as “ two giants of the travel sector”.
He said: “The idea is to utilise these partnerships to aggregate demand for flights and use these significant volumes to induce airlines around the world to restart or scale up their operations.”
The move comes after the IMO recently accepted an industry protocol, drawn up by IMEC and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), that outlines a process by which crew can be safely repatriated or sent out to ships.
The protocol is currently being reviewed by national governments including the world’s largest seafaring nations the Philippines and India.
Gargiulo is hopeful that the travel initiative, combined with widespread adoption of the industry protocol, could finally provide a solution to shipping’s crew exchange crisis.
In a separate related development earlier this year IMEC earlier came to an agreement with the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) to extend expiring crew employment contracts until 15 May under the IBF collective bargaining agreement.
The employers’ association and union are now locked in talks to extend the agreement for another month into June in which time they are hopeful that the problem will be solved.
