BA has a strike coming, and at Christmas too!

It’s amongst the so called Heathrow based ‘Mixed Fleet’ staff who work both long and short haul aircraft. The Trade Union representing the cabin crew have chosen 25 and 26 December to strike. There is no impact if your flight leaves from Gatwick, London City, or  Stansted Airports. OpenSkies and COMAIR will operate as normal.

The impact will be relatively limited. BA expects that they will operate all of the long haul flights operated by Mixed Flights Crews on these days. However, there are a number of short haul destinations that may be impacted:

Aberdeen, Basle, Belfast, Bergen, Bilbao, Bologna, Budapest, Dusseldorf, Gibraltar, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Hanover, Helsinki, Kiev, Krakow, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Manchester, Marseille, Oslo, Paris Orly, Pisa, Prague, Stavanger, St Petersburg, Stuttgart, Vienna, Venice, Warsaw and Zagreb.

BA are offering the chance to rebook. This is a fairly generous policy:

If you hold a valid ticket for travel on one of these routes (issued before 16 December) you can take advantage of one of the four following options:

• Rebook onto an alternative British Airways operated service, same point of origin and destination for travel before Christmas or up to 355 days in the future.
• Reroute onto a British Airways operated service to/from an alternative destination within 300 miles radius from the original point of origin/destination. The alternative destination must not be included in the list of affected routes above.
• Change your destination. The value of the original ticket may be used towards the purchase of a completely new ticket to an alternative British Airways destination.
• Claim a full refund

This policy also applies if you are transferring through Heathrow and your journey includes a non-affected long haul service as well as a short haul service.

This is how you rebook and refund:

If you booked directly with British Airways or via our website

• Go to Manage My Booking on ba.com where you should be able to change your booking.
• In the UK you will need to call us on 0800 727 800 or call your local call centre

If you booked your flight through a travel agent:

Please contact them directly to make any changes to your booking.

If you have booked a holiday, hotel, car hire or experience with British Airways Holidays:

Please contact us to make alternative arrangements:

• In the UK call us on 0800 727 800 or
• call your local call centre.

A range of flexible rebooking policies are available for potentially affected short haul cities.

Please note:

If you claim a full refund and subsequently discover that your original flight is going to operate then you will be treated as a new customer and can only purchase a new ticket at the prices available at the time.

If you rebook onto a British Airways flight outside of the proposed strike period and subsequently discover that your original flight is going to operate then you will be allowed to rebook back onto the original flight at no extra cost, subject to availability.

BA has a web site page for more information and will publish its short haul schedule in the next few days for the routes affected.