| Employees on strike, Heathrow airport closed |
| Kevin Done / London August 12, 2005 |
| British Airways (BA) faces more turmoil today after it was forced to cancel all its flights from Heathrow yesterday in response to unofficial industrial action by about 1,000 ground services workers. About 40,000 BA passengers were stranded around the world by cancellations on Thursday, and another 70,000 customers are due to be affected on Friday, according to a report on the website of Financial Times. BA managers and volunteer staff tried to pacify thousands of passengers caught in the terminals at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, and to find emergency hotel accommodation or re-route and re-book passengers on to other airlines. "The unofficial industrial action has hit BA when it is most vulnerable, in the peak summer weeks, with its operations becoming gridlocked, leaving around 100 aircraft and 1,000 pilots and cabin crew wrongly placed around the world," the report said. BA said on Thursday night that it would be cancelling all 500 flights to and from Heathrow up until 6pm on Friday, and it advised customers due to travel before 6 pm today not to go to the airport. The action by BA members of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), mainly baggage handlers and loaders, cargo workers and air-crew bus drivers, was staged in support of TGWU members at Gate Gourmet, the independent airline catering company. A long-running industrial dispute over restructuring and pay and conditions at Gate Gourmet rapidly escalated on Wednesday and led to the dismissal by the company of more than 600 of its 2,000 catering workers at Heathrow. Sir Rod Eddington, BA chief executive, called on Gate Gourmet management and TGWU to |
