Hundreds of thousands of British Airways passengers will see their travel plans changed again after the airline announced it will cancel more than 10,000 flights until the end of October.
At the same time, there are more voices from rail unions for strike action by operators, including the LNER, potentially causing disruption to transport over the summer.
BA said the move was designed to “protect holiday flights” following the chaos seen over the Easter and half-term holidays due to airline and airport staff shortages.
It will cancel an average of around 100 flights a day as it continues to struggle to meet its schedule amid labor shortages and the threat of strikes at its main Heathrow hub.
BA said all affected flights in the latest round of cancellations would be short-haul, where there are more multiple daily departures on major city routes.
This follows a similar number of advance cancellations made in early May for the entire summer season, and comes on top of a relatively small number – around 650 – canceled from July schedules last week.
The airline said the entire aviation industry “continues to face significant challenges and we are fully focused on building resilience into our operations to give customers the security they deserve”.
The latest schedule cuts, which took almost one in seven of BA’s flights originally on sale, were allowed by the government’s “slot amnesty” announced last month.
This has allowed BA and others to scale back operations this year without losing the right to valuable landing slots at Heathrow and other busy airports, which normally have a ‘use it or lose it’ rule.
BA said: “The Government has recently decided to give the whole industry relief on slots to minimize potential disruption this summer. While taking further action is not where we wanted to be, it is the right thing to do for our customers and colleagues. This new flexibility means we can further reduce our timetable and consolidate some of our quieter services so we can protect as many of our holiday flights as possible.”
He said most flights were unaffected and the majority of customers would fly out as planned, but added: “We do not underestimate the impact this will have and are doing everything we can to get our travel plans back to the right way. We are contacting you to apologize and offer options to rebook on new flights with us or another airline as soon as possible or to issue a full refund.”
Meanwhile, hundreds more workers at three rail companies have voted for strike action, potentially increasing the impact of rail strikes this summer.
TSSA union members at LNER, the East Coast long-distance operator, and Essex commuter service c2c voted to go on strike, while those at Northern voted for non-strike action. The results of the vote follow similar strike votes in CrossCountry and the East Midlands on Tuesday and Avanti last week.
The union said it would not immediately announce dates for strike action but would discuss next steps with workplace representatives at each operator. It had previously been suggested the action could be planned to affect the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham at the end of the month.
TSSA members perform a variety of roles for rail companies, including station and ticket office, customer service, control and train management.
Union members at Network Rail are largely in management grades who worked as emergency staff when signalmen in the RMT union went on strike last month, allowing a limited number of trains to run on main lines. A coordinated logout may result in a complete shutdown of services. The result of the TSSA strike vote at Network Rail is due on Monday.
The Aslef union, representing drivers, will announce the results of the vote at nine train operating companies on the same day, while the RMT union, representing 40,000 rail workers at 13 train operators and Network Rail, resumes settlement talks on Monday.
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