More disruptions for passengers as BA cabin crew begins strike by Zuzana Zelenakova

British Airways cabin crew began five day strike Monday. Air traffic that has been severely disrupted by the ash cloud from Icelandic volcano continues to be unstable. Despite the strike British Airways operates about 60 percent of long-haul flights from Heathrow airport and 50 percent of short-haul flights, as the company informed. Gatwick and London City Airports operate all flights. The strike began after the talks between BA and the Unite union failed during the weekend. The dispute is over wages and working conditions. The latest talks, however, revealed some cracks within the Unite that represents almost all of 15,000 cabin crew members. It turned out that one of the! Joint General Secretaries of the Unite, Derek Simpson, was sending messages to the social network site Twitter right during the talks with BA on Saturday. As a result, protesters from the Socialist Workers Party arrived at the spot causing a fuss and as Joint-General Secretary Tony Woodley said the incident ruined the possibility of any kind of deal on Saturday. “He was sitting opposite me and he did have his Blackberry out, I thought he was responding to an email or a text message but when I found out that he was actually sending his version of events to the wider audience that really did undermine my confidence in their desire to resolve the issue,” said angry BA´s chief executive Willie Walsh. As Tony Woodley said the Unite would call off the strike if the airline leadership agreed on restoring travel perks for the staff that took part in the March strike. Further strikes are scheduled to begin on 30 May and 5 June. The BA also said it has leased about ! eight planes with pilots and crew from other European airline ! companie s.

related story (sgx17366): http://www.france24.com/en/20100524-british-airways-cabin-cr...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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