BA Going to add Flights

British Airways said yesterday it would run more flights during the second wave of strike action, due to start on Saturday, because more cabin crew were volunteering for work.The airline said the number of cabin crew reporting for duty rose from 57 per cent to 62 per cent between Saturday and Monday, when the first of two scheduled strikes ended. The union disputed the claim.

BA made the pledge as it was struggling to restore services in the lull before the second walkout. The airline scrapped about 20 per cent of the schedule yesterday and warned passengers that flights throughout the week were subject to disruption. The three-day strike by 12,000 cabin crew has left some of the company's aircraft and staff in the wrong place.The publication of the flight schedule dashed any hopes of an early breakthrough to the bitter dispute over cost-cutting and jobs.

The airline said it would run a full operation at Gatwick, all flights from London City and about 70 per cent of long haul services from Heathrow during the next wave of action, planned to ground flights before the busy Easter travelling season. About 55 per cent of European services would also run, it said.BA said yesterday that our door remains open to Unite, day or night, if it wants to find a sensible settlement. But Unite said the walkout looked almost inevitable after efforts to restart talks by Brendan Barber, head of the Trades Union Congress, failed.

In a sign of the broader impact of the first three day stoppage, Guy Dubois, chief executive of Gategroup, the caterer used on long haul flights, said his group had lost revenues of £800,000 as a result of the strike. But Mr Dubois said the impact was lower than it could have been because the company had time to prepare.We knew a long time ahead that this was going to happen, he said, adding it had minimised losses by keeping employees off the roster on strike days.Kuehne+Nagel, which supplies wine and other goods for BA's in flight catering services, said the impact had been negligible, while analysts said cargo operations had been barely affected, though there could be long term reputational damage.

John Manners Bell, chief analyst at Transport Intelligence, a consultancy, said: Many shippers which rely on air cargo to provide just in time delivery capabilities will be looking at other options, especially with the strikes set to continue.BA's share price rose 2.7 per cent to 247.5p after the airline said on Monday that the strikes had cost it £21m, or £7m a day less then expected. The union claims the figure is much higher.BA has hired aircraft and crew from 11 European airlines to help it cope with the impact of the disruption and trained at least 1,000 volunteers drawn from other parts of its workforce.Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, said: Passengers will take one look at next weekend's strike schedule and rightly ask, 'what on earth is going on?' This schedule has more holes than a Swiss cheese.Is BA really saying that it would rather hit the travel plans of tens of thousands of people for another weekend than negotiate a settlement?