British Airways strike bites but passengers fly

British Airways (BA) cabin crew yesterday began a three-day strike which will force the cancellation of hundreds of flights, but the airline said many of its passengers were able to travel.

The Unite union insisted the vast majority of its 12,000 cabin crew members were supporting the strike on its first day.

But BA said more than half of staff had come into work at its main hub at London's Heathrow airport and at Gatwick outside the capital, and as a result it was reinstating some short and long-haul flights over the next few days.

Members of Unite, Britain's biggest trade union, walked out at midnight last Friday after talks with BA chief executive Willie Walsh broke down in acrimony.

More than 1,000 flights were set to be cancelled in the first phase of the action, with a second walkout to follow for four days from March 27, targeting the busy Easter holiday period.

Reports said the expected chaos at BA's hubs at Heathrow and Gatwick had failed to materialise because the airline had made contingency plans for passengers.

BA initially said a total of 1,100 flights out of the approximately 1,950 scheduled to operate during the first strike will be cancelled.

The airline had confidently stated it would keep two-thirds of its passengers flying, using staff who are not striking and by offering travellers seats on 22 planes leased from other European airlines.

And the decision of many staff to report for work was helping to clear the backlog, the airline said.

"Cabin crew are continuing to report as normal at Gatwick and the numbers reporting at Heathrow are above the levels we needed to operate our published schedule," a BA spokeswoman said.

"At Heathrow, around 50 per cent of cabin crew have reported as normal and we are therefore increasing the number of long-haul and short-haul flights in our schedule in the days ahead."

However, Unite claimed a number of planes were starting to 'stack up' on the ground at airports, with 85 parked planes at Heathrow alone.

Unite's joint leader Tony Woodley last Friday angrily accused BA of wanting "to go to war" after the talks broke down.