MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

British Airways says three-day strike has cots £ 21 million

According to BA, many staff crossed picket lines and was working

British Airways has said Unite's three-day strike will have cost it £21 million under its “current best estimate”. BA also said that contingency plans to cope with the strike had been “very successful” and that results for the year to March 31 would be “broadly unchanged”.

Earlier, the union boss organising the BA cabin crew strike made a fresh appeal for talks to end the dispute. At a rally of striking union members, Tony Woodley, joint leader of Unite, also mounted another attack on the company for trying to “browbeat” its staff into accepting worse pay and conditions.

The three-day strike is to end at midnight Monday - but a four-day walkout is planned from Saturday, March 27, and there is no sign of reconciliation between the two sides.

Mr Woodley said it was the “economics of the madhouse” for British Airways to be spending money on contingency plans to deal with the industrial action, rather than seeking to resolve a bitter row over cost-cutting.

He claimed flights were leaving empty of passengers and aircraft were being leased from other firms at an estimated cost of £300,000 a time.

As BA works to reinstate previously cancelled flights with staff that have broken the strike, Unite has claimed that the airline's contingency plans are failing. It says that of 77 BA flights scheduled to leave Heathrow, 37 are empty, another 37 are ready to go but may not have passengers or crew and only three are running as normal.

Unite also claimed the airline was offering to pay for taxis for strike breakers and had told managers to dress as crew and make their presence felt in the car park. However BA has claimed many cabin crew were ignoring the strike call.

“We are operating our planned schedule of departures at Heathrow and Gatwick and we have been able to add flights into our schedule at both airports over the weekend as well as today,” said a spokesman. A full service is set to resume rapidly on Tuesday after the first three-day action ends, he said.

According to BA, many staff crossed picket lines over the weekend with about 98% turning up for work at Gatwick airport and around 53% arriving for work at Heathrow airport.

But the Unite union disputes this - their figures suggest only 300, or 13.5%, of the 2,220 cabin crew rostered to work turned up. Its members on strike gathered at Bedfont Football Club in west London for a noisy rally, at which one worker waved a mask of Hitler.

The union Monday morning claimed that more than 140 BA aircraft were standing idle at Heathrow, but this figure was disputed by a Sky News source which said it was closer to 36.

A BA statement said: ”A great deal of the information they (Unite) have put out over the last three days has no basis in fact. For example, Unite has no way of obtaining accurate figures as to how many customers are on our aircraft or how many crews are reporting for work.“

Mr Woodley has called on BA chairman Martin Broughton and ”sensible“ directors to intervene in the dispute.

However, Mr Broughton said he had no intention of intervening ”because (chief executive) Willie Walsh is doing a great job“ and the entire board supported him.

He told the Financial Times: ”The ball is in Tony Woodley's court.“

Before the three-day stoppage, BA said it was aiming to keep 65% of passengers flying.

The firm said it had now reinstated a number of cancelled flights to more than 20 destinations after maintaining that more crew than expected had turned up for work.

An airline spokesman said: ”We will continue to offer the fullest support to our cabin crew who want to work as normal.“ He added that the firm's contingency plans had worked ”well”.