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Friday, March 26, 2010

BA strike: Second walk-out by cabin crew begins

More British Airways flights have been cancelled as a second strike by the firm's cabin crew gets under way.
According to live departure boards, 29 scheduled flights due to depart London airports on Saturday morning have already been cancelled.
However BA has said it expects disruption to be less than last weekend's strike, when cabin crew walked out for three days.
The strike is due to run from Saturday until Tuesday 30 March.
The airline expects to fly more than three-quarters of its passengers, with around 17,000 passengers affected by strike cancellations.
All flights in and out of Gatwick airport and London City airport will be unaffected by the strike, BA said.
At Heathrow at least 70% of long-haul flights and 55% of short-haul flights are expected to operate normally.
In total, more than 75% of passengers are expected to fly, says the airline.
Of the 240,000 customers originally booked to fly in the strike period, 180,000 will fly either on BA planes, or on planes hired from other carriers.
A further 43,000 have been rebooked onto other carriers, or have changed the dates of their travel, BA said.
A total of 29 flights due to fly out of London airports have already been cancelled, departure boards on BA's website show, with five arrivals cancelled.
A small number of internal flights from Scottish airports to London were also cancelled on Friday ahead of the strike.
'Macho' Walsh
BA says it has deployed "the biggest contingency plan in our history" to try and limit the impact of the strikes.

But despite those measures it estimates that last weekend's three days of stoppages cost the company a total of £21m.
The latest stoppage strikes comes amid controversy over BA's conduct during the industrial dispute.
In a letter to the Guardian newspaper on Friday, a total of 116 industrial relations academics accused BA's chief executive Willy Walsh of adopting a "macho" approach, aimed at breaking the power of the Unite union, which represents BA cabin crew.
However BA rejected the accusations, pointing to the three days of negotiations with Unite attended by Mr Walsh in the run up to the first strike.
Speaking to a news channel, Mr Walsh said that there were currently no plans to reopen talks with the union.
He also said that travel perks withdrawn from striking staff would never be reinstated. At the company's discretion, BA staff are able to buy flights for 10% of the face value - a deal that can be extended to friends and family.
Unite called the withdrawal of the perks "unacceptable anti-union bullying".
BA and Unite are in dispute over the airline's cost cutting plans, which include reducing the numbers of cabin crew on long-haul flights.
The union says that the plans involve contractual changes for its members, which it says it was not consulted about.
Analysts say BA needs to bring down its costs significantly. It is expected to announce the biggest loss in its privatised history when it reports its annual results later this year.
Last year it reported an annual loss of more than £400m.
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