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Both British Airways and Unite, the union representing its cabin crew, have this weekend claimed success over the first three-day strike, after last-minute talks which ran right up until Saturday fell apart.

While the union has claimed that London Heathrow has turned into a “ghost town” British Airways is claiming that more staff than expected has shown up for work and as such will be able to operate more flights than expected.

Eye witness reports in Heathrow seem to contradict the unions’ claims of a “ghost town” though passenger numbers were down over the weekend.  Delays of flights that hadn’t been cancelled were reported to be around an hour.

 “Our contingency plans are continuing to work well on Sunday morning around the world,” said British Airways in a statement.

“We have added additional flights into our schedule at both Heathrow and Gatwick and customers can now book onto these flights.”

As British Airways looks to emphasise that London City and Gatwick remain largely unaffected, the union in concentrating on services at Heathrow, where it claims that British Airways now has 140 planes “parked”.

“Only nine crew turned up for work today out of 1,100.  Company claims that over 1,000 have reported for work are a distortion.  This includes those who are flying back to the UK from a trip which took them out of country before the strike,” says Unite.

Efforts by the volunteer strike-breaking, cabin crew pieced together by British Airways have also been slammed by the union.

“Early reports suggest a strike-breaking volunteer crew has broken an exit.  They are said to have “blown a slide” i.e. broken the function needed when the doors go from automatic to manual on landing. This means that the emergency services need to attend to make the plane fit to fly,” they add.

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