Air traffic controllers plan to ground flights at Ireland’s three major airports for at least four hours. This so-called walkout is being done in order to push for pay raises and keep their free pension plans. The Irish Aviation Authority suspended at least 15 of Ireland’s 200 controllers without pay Tuesday, because the controllers and their union, which is called Impact, were already refusing to operate recently upgraded air traffic systems.

Officials at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports are all bracing themselves for major disruptions as controllers plan to walk off the job. The aviation authority said that about 150 flights in and out of the three airports would be canceled or suffer heavy delays.

The budget carrier Ryanair, said that it had already canceled 48 flights from Ireland, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain. The airline denounced the controllers as overpaid and under-worked. The airline went on to urge its estimated 6,000 inconvenienced passengers to make complaints by telephone and e-mail to the Impact union headquarters.

The aviation authority’s director of human resources, Liam Kavanagh, said the promised 6 percent pay raise for the controllers had been negotiated in very different economic times in 2007 and could not be paid now that Ireland has fallen into recession. He went on to accuse the controllers of being greedy and selfish at a time of exceptional economic crisis in Ireland and a double digit percent decline in passengers traveling through Irish airports. He pointed out that controllers are already phenomenally well paid compared to doctors, teachers, nurses and police offers.