May 18 – British Airways announced on Monday that its Gulf flights will be affected by the airline’s strike that begins today. “Regrettably, we have had to cancel flights on the Doha-Bahrain-London Heathrow route as well as some Jeddah and Dubai services during the first wave of strikes between May 18 to 22,” said an airline spokesperson yesterday. “There will also be some cancellations of flights on May 23 as we get our aircraft, pilots and cabin crew back into the correct positions around the world.”
The spokesperson also said that the airline is hopeful that the crew will ignore Unite’s needless call for strike. In this regard, Britain’s conciliation service Acas said it would broker talks between British Airways and Unite in a bid to prevent the five-day strike from taking off.
Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, is locked in a bitter standoff with British Airways over jobs, pay and staffing. Its members are due to walk out from May 18-22, then from May 24-28, May 30-June 3 and June 5-9. The last strike will end just two days before FIFA 2010 begins in South Africa.
