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British Airways strike averted
British Airways and the Unite union have today reached a potential settlement to avoid the strike that was likely to hit Heathrow airport at the start of the school holidays.
BA has made a much better offer which has been deemed as acceptable by the union.
Extensive negotiations were held on Wednesday 6 July and an agreement was reached. Unite, the UK’s leading union, will now ballot members involved in the dispute on the proposed offer. It would be unusual for members not to accept the revised deal. As yet, we do not know what that is.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “We welcome that BA has finally listened to the voice of its check-in staff. Unite has repeatedly warned that pay disputes at BA were inevitable unless the company took our members’ legitimate grievances seriously. I pay tribute to, and stand with, our members who have fought hard to protect their pay.”
Unite regional officer Russ Ball said: “I want to salute the solidarity and bravery of our members, who, through acting in unity, have ensured that a vastly improved offer has been made.
“I am proud to be associated with our check-in members at British Airways.”
British Airways cancel another 10,300 flights until the end of October
Yesterday BA started sending out cancellation notices for further July flights but will continue to notify customers this week of later flight cancellations. All the cancelled flights are short haul so far. You should usually be offered an alternative flight that you can accept online. If it is not acceptable, you will need to contact BA or BA Holidays depending on the type of booking. Hopefully, with this substantial number of cuts, it will end all the last minute cancellations and ease delays.
If you had an Avios booking there should not need to be Avios availability to get rebooked on another flight.
You are entitled to be rerouted on another airline if BA can’t get you to the destination within an acceptable timeframe. Or of course, you could ask for a full refund. Unless you got a really good deal, you may be better off moving the flight as far as they will let you if you don’t want to travel this summer. It’s worth looking at the prices to your destination as you may end up paying substantially more to rebook at a later date. You can check prices on BA’s low fare finder.
If you want to see which routes are affected, you can find the list here.
British Airways resurrects SUN-AIR
British Airways Sun Air Dornier 328 at London City Airport British Airways has decided to restart flights with its SUN-AIR franchise from 5 September. The flights will be from London City to Billund. Billund is a city in central Denmark and home to the Legoland Billund theme park. Nearby, Billund water park has a tropical aquadome. There are also a series of sculptures lining a path along the Grindsted stream in Skulpturpark Billund.
Legoland Billund ResortThe route will operate Monday to Thursday with up to 6 flights a week.
If you are a bit of an aviation geek, it’s a fun trip on a Dornier 328 high-wing aircraft which you don’t often see in service in Europe for commercial flights. There is only economy class operated on these flights, but they used to be very generous with their onboard catering pre-covid.
You can buy tickets from ba.com, but they are very highly-priced at £380 in economy as only full fare tickets are available. However, there are plenty of Avios seats available with the following pricing return:
- 18500 Avios + £ 1.00
- 17000 Avios + £ 11.00
- 14500 Avios + £ 21.00
- 9500 Avios + £ 41.00
- 7400 Avios + £ 71.00
- 5900 Avios + £ 91.00
4 comments
Either there’s been some intentional misdirection regarding that figure OR those flying over the summer, who hadnt already been affected, are pretty safe.
We just had LHR-BER & MUN-LHR cancelled and they were very late Sept. So they’re either lying through their teeth or that number is reasonably spread out.
I’ve rebooked the BER leg but im not losing half a day to suit them on the way back. I have however found a very nice J seat for MUN-LHR, via DOH in qsuites ????
Hopefully they let you go that. I’ve heard they are cracking down on those sort of routes!
The new wave of cancellations are certain to be unsettling for many travellers. However, in my experience, they can sometimes work to your advantage, although I do appreciate it’s more difficult for families and those with fixed time off.
I always check my options before accepting the change they are suggesting. One benefit of a cancellation is that it allows changes to be made on both sectors, not just the one that’s been cancelled. As a result it’s sometimes possible to change to flights that are better timed, were more expensive at the time of booking or, as Michele said, had no Avios availability previously. e.g. I had an ATH-LHR sector cancelled and was able to choose a flight that suited me better than the one they were suggesting. However, I was also able to change my LHR-ATH night departure – that hadn’t been cancelled – to the more civilised, but at the time extortionately expensive, lunchtime departure ex LHR.
For avgeeks, at the bottom of the flight options page there are sometimes some interesting connecting flight options. While I agree Clayton that it would be nice to be able to earn more Avios and tier points by being rerouted LHR-DOH-EDI with QR, I have seen some interesting two and three sector domestic combinations involving Aberdeen, Isle of Man, Southampton & Belfast City flying with partner airlines like Loganair that could be fun, and after all, who doesn’t like a Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer!????
Some good tips Duncan! Never knew that about Logan air. I do like a caramel wafer!
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