4 Daily Express Thursday, August 8, 2019
DX1STRyanair
pilots vote
to strike
for 5 days
over pay
THOUSANDS face
even more travel
misery as pilots at
Ryanair voted to
strike over pay and
conditions.
Members of the
British Airline Pilots
Association (Balpa)
voted by four to one
to back the action on
a 72 per cent turnout.
The first strike will
be for two days over
August 22 and August- The second action
will be for three days
from September 2
until last thing on
September 4.
The union said:
“Decades of Ryanair
refusing to deal with
unions has resulted in
two things. Firstly, a
management that
apparently doesn’t
understand how to
work with unions, and
secondly a company
that doesn’t have a
number of standard
agreements that any
union would
reasonably expect in
any workplace. That is
why our claim
includes many issues
including pensions,
loss of licence
insurance, maternity
benefits, allowances,
and a fair, transparent
and consistent pay
structure.
“We have made no
progress with Ryanair
management on any
of those areas at all,
seemingly because
Ryanair management
cannot understand
how to go about
working with us
constructively, or how
to negotiate.”
Brian Strutton,
Balpa’s general
secretary, added: “No
pilot wants to spoil
the public’s travel
plans but at the
moment it seems we
have no choice.”
Ryanair called the
action “ill-judged and
ill-timed” and claimed
only 30 per cent of
Ryanair’s UK pilots
backed it.
The airline said:
“Balpa have no
mandate to disrupt
our customers’
holidays and flights,
particularly at a time
when UK pilots are
facing job losses due
to the Boeing MAX
delivery delays, and
the threat of a no-deal
Brexit on October 31.”Chaos for holiday families
in BA’s f lights meltdown
By Giles Sheldrick
Chief Reporter
BA flights were grounded by glitches
By Alan JonesFamilies
sleep on the
floor of
Heathrow
Terminal 5
yesterday
where, left,
dozens of
flights were
cancelled.
Right, lack of
information
left travellers
frustratedUP to 20,000 passengers were left
stranded yesterday after computer
failure sparked chaos and the cancel-
lation of 117 flights at Britain’s busiest
airports.
British Airways now faces a
compensation bill of at least £8million
after a major information technology
glitch forced the grounding of planes
at Heathrow and Gatwick.
The systems failure was eventually
resolved shortly after 4pm – some 12
hours after the start of unprecedented
disruption which saw holiday plans
ruined and tempers flare.
At Heathrow’s Terminal 5, the home
of Britain’s flag carrier, short-haul
passengers were told check-in was
shut and they should go home.
Families, including parents with
babies and young children, were stuck
early-morning Southern and Gatwick
Express services cancelled.
BBC News presenter Tim Willcox,
56, who was heading to Nice, France,
with his wife Najah, was among those
left high and dry.
He was stuck on the 5.30am
Express for 20 minutes before being
put on another train, which was also
cancelled, missing his 7.25am flight.
He said: “Most flights are now
either fully booked or have shot up in
price. We’ve got car hire waiting, a
hotel booked.
“We’re now looking at flying toParis and then flying from Paris to
Nice. People were seething.”
Zac Lennie was stuck on a plane
with his children for more than an
hour with no idea when they would
leave Gatwick.
He said: “We arrived at 4.30am for
a 6.45am flight to massive queues.
They boarded us as normal, but 15
minutes after we were due to take off
we were told the systems had gone
down and we were awaiting paper-
work. Thirty minutes later we were
told the same.” BA has offered short-
haul passengers departing fromHeathrow, Gatwick and City Airport
the chance to re-book until Tuesday.
BA has been beset with problems
with the spectre of strikes by its pilots.
Which? Travel’s Naomi Leach said:
“This apparent BA systems failure is
another kick in the teeth for travellers
who are likely to have spent weeks
worrying about whether their holiday
flights will take off.”
A BA spokesman said: “We are very
sorry to our customers for the disrup-
tion to their travel plans.”CONSUMER CHAMPION: PAGE 14for hours as “chaos let loose”. Darren
Rowe, whose flight to Hamburg was
scrubbed, said: “There were massive
queues and nobody was saying any-
thing. The lack of information was just
pathetic. They could have had some-
body updating people about what was
going on.”
During the height of the summer
holiday season, flights from Heathrow
to Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Geneva,
Zurich, Nice, Athens, Istanbul,
Larnaca, Palma, Rome and Venice
were cancelled along with domestic
services to Glasgow, Edinburgh,
Manchester and Newcastle.
At Gatwick, flights to Glasgow,
Jersey, Malaga, Naples and Venice
were axed. More than 200 others were
delayed with some more than five
hours behind schedule.
Some holidaymakers faced a strug-
gle even getting to Gatwick in West
Sussex after a fire on the tracks saw all
Passengers tell of tears in the mayhem
Rosie, left, and Alison sit it out in Gatwick Airport Patrick stranded at Heathrow
TEENAGER Rosie Wilson said she By David Pilditch
would have been stranded with
friend Alison McCall if her father
Graham had not stepped in.
The pair, both 16, flew to Gatwick
from a holiday in Bordeaux, France,
to find their connecting flight to
Glasgow was cancelled.
Rosie, from Kilmarnock: “There’s
been a lot of tears. We don’t have
any money. My dad was providing
us with all the information.
“We’ve not heard anything
officially. He worked out what we
had to do and did it all online.”
Graham bought Rosie and Alison
bus tickets to Heathrow and then
flights to Edinburgh. Patrick Smyth,61, from Hexham, Northumberland,
told how he checked in for his
6.05am flight from Newcastle to
Heathrow.
He was due to catch a 9.35am
flight to Zurich for a hiking holiday
in Switzerland. But instead his plane
sat on the tarmac for four hours.
Mr Smyth, an IT consultant for a
bank, said: “I don’t think much of
their system.
“As an outsider it looks totally
dysfunctional. If it was our system,
you do things and you have
recoveries – but they didn’t seem to
have even a piece of paper.”Pictures: SWNS / EPA / REUTERS