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UK Airport Worker Strike to Shut Down Most British Airports

August 13, 2010 at 3:46 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

The last Monday of August is a Bank Holiday in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and roughly a million Brits accordingly use the extended weekend to vacation out of the country. If the BAA employees at London-Heathrow, London-Stansted, Glasgow, Southampton, Edinburgh and Aberdeen make good on their threat to walk out, the loss of firefighters and security staff would force the airports to close, functionally stranding anyone who wants to get in or out of Britain (with the exception of London-Gatwick, London-City airports).

When British Airways employees tried this stunt last year they got slapped down by a judge, because timing your strike to wreck the UK economy violates British fair play or something. Nice to see that the Unite union, which represents both the BA employees and the airport employees who are threatening to strike at the end of the month, is willing to trot out the same routine again. To their friends and family it probably demonstrates admirable spunk. To the rest of the UK, to anyone who needs to fly through the UK, and to anyone at any airport anywhere in the world that will be affected by UK cancellations, it's just obnoxious.

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British Airways Creating Entirely New Fleet to Circumvent Union Strikes

June 24, 2010 at 3:52 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

It's been a couple of days since we've hit you over the head with British Airways airline strike news, and this morning's developments are eyebrow raising in at least a couple of ways.

The beleaguered airline, which has been known to successfully deploy replacement crews to get through employee walkouts, is now creating an entirely new crew to operate an entirely new fleet on some of their routes. The announcement came after the Unite union declared their intention to hold another strike vote next week if they don't get what they want, which they won't. The airline has already lost hundreds of millions of euros, and so was ready to try something new.

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The Planes and Fees of Spirit Airlines Are Back in Business

June 21, 2010 at 9:08 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

At this point, things should be pretty much back to normal at Spirit Airlines. Last week pilots hit the picket line, and passengers were forced to hit those oh-so-comfortable terminal seats with no place to go. The airline slowly returned to normal by adding around 20 flights on Thursday, and by this week the prereclined seats should be back in business. After all, it takes a few days to get the planes back to where they need to be.

We don’t know how much cash the pilots are getting now, but hopefully they won a bit of a boost with their strike. They walked off the job because they didn’t think their salaries were in line with other low cost carriers in the country.

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Striking Pilots Ground All Spirit Airlines Flights Until End of the Week

June 14, 2010 at 9:35 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

Update 15. June: Spirit Airlines has announced that all flights through Thursday are now also cancelled.

We can understand if you were seduced by the "Many Islands Low Fares" sales, but those cheap tickets mean nothing at this point as the pilots of Spirit Airlines have decided to walk off the job.

The pilots are unhappy with several factors in their contract, and now it looks like the planes will be grounded until at least WednesdayTHURSDAY. We guess you'll be waiting a bit longer before flying in their "pre-clined" seats and paying for both checked and carry-on baggage.

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Spirit Airlines Pilots Could Strike As Soon As This Weekend

June 8, 2010 at 9:09 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

Oh Spirit Airlines, you are so silly with your carry-on baggage fees, pre-reclined seats, and wacky advertising campaigns. We might be the only ones who feel this way about you, because you clearly keep selling plenty of seats and announcing new flights to places like Colombia. However, this may all change later this month, because even with the increased revenue stream, the pilots are not too thrilled with things at the airline.

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The British Airways Strike Has Already Cost the Airline $150 Million

June 1, 2010 at 4:45 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

We're now in the third day of the second wave of the second round of 2010 British Airways cabin crew airline strikes. The airline and the Unite union are in the midst of talks but—no surprise here—no one expects them to go anywhere.

The union wants the airline to restore travel perks and withdraw employee punishment proceedings as prerequisites to negotiations. The airline says that concessions will come the way they normally do, as part of a broader agreement. So the odds of this current strike getting resolved before it runs its course are quite slim.

The conventional wisdom on the negotiations is that they long ago became a personal spat between BA CEO Willie Walsh and Unite joint General Secretary Tony Woodley. That's true as far as it goes, but it's not the whole story. As much as these two just really hate each other, each side is also dealing with fundamental life-and-death issues. The union needs to show that it can protect its members, which is why this seemingly random travel perks thing has become such a big deal. For its part, BA just posted a second straight year of record losses and is still reeling from volcanic ash problems. In the most basic terms, they simply won't survive unless they cut costs.

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The Latest Updates on the Spirit and American Airlines Strikes

May 27, 2010 at 5:28 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

We're pretty close to giving up on airline industry labor relations. Spirit Airlines pilots can't go on strike until June 12th, which is when their 30-day "cooling off" period ends. But in the meantime they're keeping busy by picketing against Spirit, a company they're ostensibly still working for, because the airline is opening a new route that might make a profit. That's literally their excuse, that the new LGA to DTW route might make money. So they're picketing.

Meanwhile you've got American Airlines preparing for a theoretical flight attendant strike that's many months away by asking 4,000 managers to retrain so they can do the job, as if this was some kind of sitcom: "okay so whoever loses the bet has to put on a uniform and be flight attendant for a day."

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Airport Worker Strikes in Paris and Berlin Delay Scores of Flights

May 27, 2010 at 9:41 AM | by JetSetCD | 0 Comments

If you're planning on flying into or out of Paris-Charles de Gaulle or Paris-Orly airports today, you might want to be extra aware of your flight's status on FlightStats and have your airline's contact number at hand, as French airport workers have gone on strike over retirement age.

Tweeting live from the front lines—from on a delayed plane at CDG—is musician Ted Leo, of the band Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. First, his flight returned to the gate before takeoff with an equipment issue, and just as that was fixed and they were all set to leave for the US, the airport workers' strike began. His latest tweet: "We've been disembarked aaaaaaand it looks like the entire airport's shutting down." Now, CDG is delaying and canceling flights on account of the strike, and other Paris-bound flights from international airports should also be affected.

Now, for Berlin's similar issues...

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British Airways Strike Begins as the Showdown Gets Even Nastier

May 24, 2010 at 10:30 AM | by Omri | 0 Comments

British Airways is running at 60% today, with London-Gatwick and London-City airports at normal but London-Heathrow in total disarray. That's because day 1 of 5 of BA summer airline strike 1 of 3 is now underway.

@British_Airways keeps repeating that travelers should continuously monitor their flight and be aware of their options, so consider those links duly passed on.

Just to give you a sense of the level of public discourse surrounding this debacle, UK media outlets are already running photos linking striking cabin crews to enraged Trotskyist mobs. Even more disturbingly, that's actually kind of fair given how a union leader kind of live-tweeted the secret negotiations which kind of incited a Socialist Workers Party melee which kind of invaded the talks and shut them down.

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Breaking: UK Court Allows British Airways to Strike; Walkouts Scheduled for Monday

May 20, 2010 at 2:35 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

Remember that second injunction that British Airways recently won, where its unionized employees were banned by a UK judge from striking? Just overturned. A London court instead sided with the Unite union, allowing BA flight cabin crews to walk off their jobs - something they now intend to do as early as Monday. The result should fall somewhere between travel chaos and cancellation apocalypse, with BA set to cancel up to 50% of LHR flights:

The airline said it expected to cancel about one third of its flights during the walkouts, with services to and from its hub at London Heathrow Airport expected to be reduced by as much as 50 percent... “B.A. must now accept that negotiation not litigation is the only way to secure the settlement we all want,” said Tony Woodley, Unite joint general secretary. “However, further strikes will be unavoidable if the company does not immediately work with us to address the outstanding issues.”

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The Latest on the British Airways, Spirit and AirTran Strikes

May 19, 2010 at 12:15 PM | by Omri | 1 Comment

Welcome to today's edition of This Week In Airline Strikes, with our regulars British Airways and Spirit Airlines being joined by AirTran.

The current scorecard reads "no" on British Airways, "yes" on Spirit Airlines, and "WTF" on AirTran, where 98% of their pilots just voted to go on what would be a devastating, company-killing strike because they're that dissatisfied with their average salary of $129,600/yr. So let's get started...

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British Airways and Spirit Airlines Strikes on the Horizon

May 10, 2010 at 1:27 PM | by Omri | 1 Comment

The week is beginning with news swirling around two potential airline strikes, the first being the seemingly neverending British Airways situation and the other coming from American LCC Spirit Airlines.

First, British Airways: British Airways cabin crew is again threatening to walk out for 20 days, starting March 18. We've never really understood what the British Airways union thinks they're accomplishing with their strikes. It was totally predictable before their last walkout that the public would side with BA's management, which is exactly what ended up happening.

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