The Catch-up: Summer holidays at risk as British Airways loses appeal to block pilots strike

What happened?

British Airways has lost a legal challenge to block its pilots from striking over a pay dispute. The airline is holding more meetings with the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) to continue negotiations after the Court of Appeal refused to grant an injunction to block industrial action. The legal action followed an announcement last week by Balpa that its members had backed industrial action by more than nine to one, on a turnout of 90%.

Is my holiday going to be affected?

The union has to give two weeks’ notice of any planned strike, meaning the earliest possible timing of a walkout in the event talks fail would be mid-August. The strike could still be called off - Balpa’s general secretary Brian Strutton said action could be avoided after BA agreed to resume negotiations.

In a statement, BA said: “We are disappointed that the pilots’ union, Balpa, has chosen to threaten the holidays of thousands of our customers this summer with unprecedented strike action. We are very sorry for the disruption Balpa’s strike action will cause our customers."

However, the scale of disruption is hard to quantify, partly because they haven’t gone on strike for four decades but also because it is unknown how many pilots would walk out. If many flights are grounded each day, that would impact tens of thousands of passengers.

For more information, visit ba.com or by contact your travel agent.

Everything you need to know about the BA strikes (The Telegraph)

Holiday chaos looms as attempts by BA to block pilot strikes fail (The Guardian)

When would the BA pilot walkout happen and which flights would be affected? (The Independent)

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