Heathrow Airport has said some passengers may face delays over the Easter holiday due to a pay strike.
Hundreds of security guards from the Unite union, who work for Heathrow Airport, have started 10 days of industrial action.
Disruptions during the Easter holidays
It threatens to disrupt Britain’s biggest airport at the start of the Easter school holidays. The strike involves security guards at Terminal 5, which is only used by British Airways, and those who screen cargo. Unite accused the airport of a pay cut in real terms.
Heathrow said it offered a 10 per cent pay rise retroactive to January 1, plus a lump sum payment of more than £1,000.
The airport said contingency plans kept the airport operating as usual.
However, British Airways canceled around 70 flights on Friday. This included flights already cut from the schedule due to the strikes and cancellations for other reasons, such as bad weather and an air traffic control strike in France.
The director of Heathrow wants to be reassuring
Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye told the BBC that “many” security guards chose to work on Friday, but that “many” of the agency’s security guards had been recruited, at the alongside “hundreds” of officials who were “there to help”.
“The airport is operating normally,” he said.
