British Airways (BA) said on Saturday it will operate 85% of its medium-haul flights and 80% of long-haul journeys as it returns to normal following a devastating strike that grounded more than 70 000 passengers since Thursday.
A spokesperson said it will take several days to get operations completely back to normal at London’s Heathrow airport.
”We are working to clear the backlog,” she said, adding that passengers who were unable to get a flight out on Friday had either been lodged in hotels at the airline’s expense or made ”as comfortable as possible” in the terminals.
The company began limited services on Friday after its Transport and General Workers’ Union staff started to return to work following a wildcat walkout in support of sacked employees of Gate Gourmet, BA’s catering supplier at Heathrow.
”We face a complex logistical challenge with at least 100 aircraft and 1 000 flying crew out of position,” Mike Street, director of customer services and operations, said in a statement.
”As a result, it will take some time to return to a normal flying programme. We recognise how frustrating this must be, but we are working as hard as we can to get customers away on their holidays.”
At Heathrow terminal four, passengers tried to make the best of an uncertain situation as staff handed out queue numbers for flights.
”We are hopeful we will get a flight eventually,” said 22-year-old paramedicine student Kristinn Ingi from Iceland. ”We are the lucky ones, we’re young without children.”
Canadian teacher Sandra Park (28), stuck in London since being forced off her plane to Toronto on Thursday, said: ”I’ve met two German guys who have made me laugh throughout. We’ve toured London instead of moping here.”
BA staff were doing their best to keep stranded passengers stocked with food and beverages, but cases of conflicting information on flights did not help nerves already frayed by a long wait at the airport.
”We phoned last night and were told it was all on, so when we turned up here they said it was all off,” said Chris Booth (38), who had been camped at the terminal with his family since 6am.
”If we had known beforehand, I could have left my wife and children at the hotel, but the BA helpline is not manned between midnight and 9am and our flight was meant to be at 9.30am.”
A Heathrow airport spokesperson said on Saturday that there are still ”several thousand” passengers who have not yet been allocated tickets for a flight that will be operating, but could not give exact figures for how many people are waiting.
There are also about 30 000 bags that have become stuck in the system due to the disruption, according to the spokesperson.
”They are not with the people they should be with. We are working to return them.”
But she added that the situation is improving quickly.
”The atmosphere here is considerably calmer and less frantic. The situation is improving by the hour.”
BA’s operational performance on Saturday was better than it had been predicting. On Friday, officials said they were aiming to operate half the medium-haul flights and 70% of the long-haul ones.
Analysts said the strike could have cost the airline up to £40-million.
Negotiations to resolve the conflict at Gate Gourmet were scheduled to resume on Saturday with the aid of the government labour mediation service. A union spokesperson described a first meeting on Friday as ”useful”.
Gate Gourmet, a private company belonging to Texas Pacific Group, laid off 650 workers on Wednesday, and about 1 000 BA staff walked out in solidarity the next day.
About 700 flights were cancelled over a 36-hour period. — Sapa-AFP