New British Airways Strike Begins
The cabin crew at British Airways began their second round of 5-day strikes on Sunday, which is going to mess up half-term travel plans for thousands. This comes after the carrier’s management and Unite union leaders still haven’t been able to come to an agreement to end the 15-month dispute over pay and working conditions, which now involves withdrawn travel perks from staff that went on strike in March.
Despite the fact that hundreds of services will still be canceled, British Airways is confident that they will be able to transport more passengers and operate more services this week than last week, which was when the first wave of the 5-day walkouts started. They say that they plan to operate more than 70% of long-haul flights and 55% of short-haul flights this week, which is slightly better than the 60% of long-haul and 50% of short-haul flights they operated last week.
A spokesman for the carrier said that their global operations went good last week and have started off well for this strike. He added that more cabin crew are even showing up for their duties.
Although British Airways is bringing good news, Unite says that the airline will lose more than £100 million from the total 27 days of industrial action. Meanwhile, Derek Simpson, the joint general secretary of the union, has challenged for the strike negotiations to be televised so that the public can see how unreasonable airline chief executive Willie Walsh is being. He thinks this will help end the deadlock.
Simpson also continues to push for Walsh to return travel perks to crew that walked out in March, for which they will pause the strikes. This current strike is set to end on Thursday, but if the sides can’t come to an agreement, another 5-day walkout will start on Saturday, June 5.
Find Cheap Flights!