British Airways planes taxied at Heathrow Airport on September 9, 2019 in London due to a 48 hour ‘walkout’, grounding most of its flights over a dispute about the pay structure of it’s pilots.
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“Please don’t go to the airport” British Airways urged passengers booked on its flights Monday as a pilots strike causes mayhem at airports with “nearly 100%” of the airlines flights cancelled, according to the company’s statement, in what’s being called by the media “the biggest shutdown in history.”
More than 200,000 passengers have been affected so far as hundreds of flights were grounded during the first day of the strike planned by the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) to last through Tuesday, September 10, then to resume on September 27.
Passengers hoping to catch a rare flight in a near-deserted departure area at Heathrow airport in west London on September 9, 2019, as the airline’s first-ever pilots’ strike began, sparking travel chaos for tens of thousands of passengers.
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British Airways @British_Airways operates more than 850 flights a day and the pilots strike over pay and work benefits is the first of its kind for the company.
Customers have been offered refunds or the option to re-book for another date or on an alternate airline.
The action is affecting flights across the globe and is expected to cost British Airways around £100 million in lost revenue and additional costs.
The travel chaos comes after pilots rejected a pay increase of 11.5 % offered by British Airways.”We understand the frustration and disruption BALPA’s strike action has caused our customers,” the company wrote in a statement. “After many months of trying to resolve the pay dispute, we are extremely sorry that it has come to this.”
The union argues that “the pilots remain very angry with BA” because the company has increased its profits — more than $3 billion annually, according to the International Airlines Group – on the backs of its pilots, with pay cuts and long hours.
“British Airways needs to wake up and realize its pilots are determined to be heard,” said Brian Strutton, BAPA’s General Secretary, who calculates that the strike will cost the company £40 million a day but could be settled for £5 million. “The pilots have previously taken big pay cuts to help the company through hard times.”
“Shares in IAG, which owns the UK airline, dropped around 3% on Monday morning as BA grounded almost all its 1,700 flights, hitting 195,000 customers,” the Financial Times reported. “The fall wiped off more than £200 million from its market capitalization as investors worried about the impact of the walkouts, with one top-10 shareholder admitting “you do get concerned about the situation.”
As in most acrimonious labor conflicts, the reports from the union and from British Airways are markedly different: The airline has said it’s “ready and willing to return to talks” with the union, while BALPA representatives claim that BA “outright ignored” its latest proposal.
