BRITISH AIRWAYS is to give 17,500 staff two free tickets each to compensate them for stress and inconvenience suffered during last week’s cancellations debacle at Heathrow.
The offer, which will cost the airline £4m, extends to most operational employees, including check-in staff, baggage handlers, engineers and call-centre workers, but not pilots.
The seats will be on less busy routes that are already sold through Hotline, an internal BA service that offers discounted tickets to staff.
Disclosure of the offer is likely to enrage the thousands caught up in the chaos at Heathrow last week. BA cancelled about 100 flights in the run-up to the bank-holiday travel rush, stranding passengers at Heathrow, with many having to sleep in the terminals overnight.
Days earlier BA had defused a strike threat to bank-holiday travel by clinching an eleventh-hour pay deal with ground staff.
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The latest disruption was blamed on a shortage of terminal workers. Rod Eddington, BA’s chief executive, told The Sunday Times the airline had been about 120 people short, and that another 200 were in training, the first of whom would start work next week.
Staff problems had been aggravated by bad weather, which at one stage closed Heathrow’s runways, and by technical snags with several aircraft. The delays are likely to cost the airline about £10m.
Despite suggestions at Heathrow that BA had been the victim of a deliberate “sick-out” by staff, Eddington said that there was no obvious evidence of unofficial industrial action.
This week the airline will begin an investigation into the causes of the disruption. Senior sources at BA said management changes had not been ruled out, with the roles of Mervyn Walker, UK airports director, and Peter Read, Heathrow operations director, likely to be the subject of particular scrutiny.
Mike Street, BA’s operations director, is also under the spotlight, but has earned credit internally for brokering last week’s pay agreement. Ground staff will receive an 8.5% rise over three years — backdated to the start of this financial year — and a £1,000 bonus. The deal includes a target for reducing the average number of sick days per employee from 17 to 10.
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BA struck outline pay agreements with its pilots and engineers late on Thursday night. The three-year deals include a 8.5% pay increases, but are still subject to ratification by union members.
Yesterday flights at Heathrow were largely back to normal, with only three flights having been cancelled.
A YouGov survey of public attitudes to air travel published yesterday showed widespread dissatisfaction with airlines and airports, with BA faring poorly against its main rivals, Virgin Atlantic and BMI.