BA to ‘keep flying’ despite cabin crew strike

    
   British Airways has drawn up a detailed contingency plan to keep the airline flying after the Unite union announced a series of strikes by its cabin crew members late March.
    The airline is optimistic that a substantial number of its flights will operate from Heathrow, despite proposal for strikes between 20-22 March and 27-30 March. London City Airport is expected to be unaffected and many – if not all – flights are likely to operate from Gatwick.
    Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, said that the company had “done everything in its power” to reach agreement with the union. 
     He said that, despite the serious economic conditions, there were no pay cuts and or compulsory redundancies being proposed and the dispute was primarily over staffing levels and structures.
     He added “at Heathrow we have got very developed contingency plan which will see us operating a significant part of the programme”.

Amongst the proposals are

• The use of around 1,000 staff from other parts of the airline who have been trained to work as in-flight cabin crew.
• The hiring of fully-crewed chartered aircraft to operate services on European routes.
• The rescheduling and consolidation of many flights.