Originally Posted by
westtexas
Rather than a political/moral/ethical/legal/whatever question about who is right and wrong, I have a question about the mechanics of where people and planes and outstations will be. I confess, this feeds in to my personal interest, but I am curious how it would be handled nonetheless.
So a plane is at an outstation in some unpleasant part of the world. The news goes out that a strike is planned for Day X. Does the plane at the outstation and the crew who have spent at least one night there:
1) Fly back to London, thus parking too many planes and people in London, but perhaps getting some passengers to their destinations and not leaving crew members stranded, or
2) Stay where it is, because there is a strike on and BA does not want even more people demanding service in London
3) Stay where it is, because the crew who was to work that flight never flew to that forgotten part of the world knowing there would be a strike on the day they were to be working?
In answer to your questions, going by what happened last time back in 1996,
the vast majority of aircraft have a short turnaround away from base usually 2 hours, enough to refuel, re cater and clean. Then the aircraft heads back with the crew that had just night stopped. Therefore, there would be one or more crews at a given hotel depending upon the amount of flights there are to a destination. The only place where an aircraft comes back with a crew is Luanda where we have a minimum rest at a hotel. In answer to your questions
1: If a strike took place on a thursday all aircraft taking off from LHR,LGW and GLA on this day would be grounded thus not supplying an aircraft to the network and so in return not being able to ferry passengers back to LHR, so passengers and crew are stranded at that destination. Incoming aircraft to LHR on that day should in theory remain unaffected as cabin crew cannot strike in a foreign country.
2:However, due to mounting people numbers in the terminals and a lack of parking space on the ground for aircraft some flights to LHR would be cancelled, from a logistical point of view. BA would do their best to put passengers on other carriers but space and timing will play an important factor in such cases.
3: Some crew with wives/girlfriends/partners and family going on a trip knowing that there will be a strike on a certain day may indeed decide not to come to work as they may be away from their families for too long, last time the average time that a crew member stayed away from home was 10 days. However, it took took the network approx 17 days to get back to normal.
Please remember that its only the crew who are rostered a duty on the day of the strike that are able to strike and not show up. There are 12,000 cabin crew so only a small portion will strike depending on how long the strike will last for. Last time the vast majority of crew called in sick for up to 7 days (the legal limit in the UK without a doctors note) and even then there were threats from management that we would loose our jobs if we didn,t show a certificate, which was and is wholly illegal.
I do hope that this has answered your questions and fulfilled your interest. I have heard nothing from our union that things are going well. I shall keep you posted.