BA strikes disrupt cargo

BRITISH Airways (BA) has pledged to keep more than 60 per cent of its long-haul and 30 per cent of its short-haul flights operating should the cabin crew go ahead with their two strikes: for three days from 20 March and for four days from 27 March.

With a sizable proportion of British Airways World Cargo’s airfreight being shipped via bellyhold capacity the impact on its shipping customers could be huge.

The threatened strikes are attracting increasingly negative press, with the UK’s prime minister Gordon Brown entering the fray and denouncing them as being “not in the company’s interests…not in the workers’ interests and…certainly not in the national interest”.