Let me start with the specific and move to the general.

The specific: My point was last time BA had the exact same notice which was enough to put together a contingency plan, so why should it no longer be enough? BA are choosing not to make a plan as quickly, the Union did not change anything.

The general: At the risk of stating the obvious, the only point of a strike is to create disruption. In that sense, I'm puzzled by the numbers of people on this thread suggesting that BA should do their compulsory minimum but MF staff and their representatives are somehow guilty when they do the same.

First of all, the 7 day is a complete red herring. It is only the deadline before the specific strike date, but BA got the legal notice about the organisation of the consultation on a strike, which means that by definition, they were aware for 3 weeks before the strike that a strike could take place and could prepare its contingency plans there and then and in fact, undoubtedly did.

Yes the 28 days is accurate - it is there to protect companies by not allowing unions to use the threat of an open ended strike as a permanent Damocles sword over the company's head as in 'hey hey, maybe we'll strike but you don't know when!' So:

- On 22/12, BA knew Unite would organise a new consultation on whether to organise a strike or not,
- that the consultation would end on 3/1,
- and that if MF voted again in favour of a strike, that would take place any time between 10 and 31/1.

Those are already some of the most restrictive strike laws in the world, and quite frankly, Unite would have had to be complete imbeciles to choose the maximum notice (e.g. 30-31/1) because precisely, it would have allowed BA to modify other employees' leave accordingly etc in such a way as to experience exactly 0 strike effect and maybe even saving money from not paying striking employees whilst merely rearranging others' leave at no extra cost. BA will still do some of that but that won't be enough so they'll need either to cancel some flights and reimburse or reaccommodate passengers accordingly, which costs money, and/or to charter planes and crews from other airlines which costs money - and that: costing the company some money, is exactly what -- indeed the only thing -- that a strike is aiming to achieve.

Of course people are free to be against freedom of strike (I am not) either in general or when they specifically affect one, but there is really no place for 'allowing strikes only if they don't cost the company anything' (ie if they do not disrupt) because as it would guarantee that a company can in fact only benefit from its employees going on strike, in practice this would deny freedom of strike (which is exactly why this is the condition of allowed strikes in many authoritarian regimes!)