As British Airways enters the third day of a strike by 12,000 cabin crew attempting to force Chief Executive Officer Willie Walsh to drop cuts to pay and staffing levels, the airline said it made a "good start" at operations.
In the Middle East, the airline cancelled one of its three daily flights on the Dubai-London route for Saturday and Sunday and its daily flight on the Bahrain-London route, for the same days, a spokesperson told Emirates Business.
In a statement, Walsh said: "We have operated every flight we had planned... And 50 per cent of our cabin crew reported at Heathrow who were on the roster."
Meanwhile, all cabin crew reported for duty at Gatwick Airport and London City airport service operated as normal, the carrier said in an e-mailed statement.
The Unite union said BA had managed to fly only a third of normal scheduled flights, with 85 planes grounded at Heathrow, and its main terminal was akin to "a ghost town".
This weekend's walkout, the first at London-based British Airways since 1997, will be followed by a four-day strike from March 27. The stoppages may cost more than the £63 million (Dh347m) saving Walsh is seeking in a labour deal.
BA aims to fly about 65 per cent of customers with bookings during the strike, helped by 6,000 volunteers from other parts of the company, including 1,000 stand-in flight attendants.
Unite said 80 per cent of cabin crew were supporting the strike on the first day of the dispute, with only 10 flights leaving Heathrow between 12.20pm and 2.30pm, compared with the normal 50. BA has scrapped about 50 per cent of flights scheduled to carry about 30,000 people a day during the dispute, which began on Friday, and will concentrate on operating as many long-haul services as possible using rented aircraft and volunteer crews.
BA has also hired 25 planes from other airlines and charter companies, together with pilots and crew, in an effort to operate about 30 per cent of short-haul services from London's Heathrow airport.
Talks with Unite union General Secretary Tony Woodley broke down after three days on March 19 when Walsh presented a proposal he acknowledged was less attractive than previous offers, saying it had been modified to take account of expenses from keeping planes flying during the strike. The plan was still "fair and sensible" and would be accepted if put to cabin crew, he said.
Relations with Unite worsened in November, when Walsh used voluntary departures to cut crew levels without consulting the union. He is also seeking to reduce pay for new recruits to help lower costs following a global slump in demand for travel. BA will likely log a record pretax loss of £600m in the fiscal year to March 31, Chief Financial Officer Keith Williams said in the company's internal newsletter on March 11.
The seven-day walkout may cost £105m, according to Citigroup analyst Andrew Light.
BA, which agreed in November to merge with Iberia Lineas Aereas de Espana SA, has jumped 30 per cent this year on the London exchange, and Iberia is up 37 per cent in Madrid. The two carriers were the best performers in the Bloomberg European Airlines Index, which climbed four per cent. Deutsche Lufthansa, whose pilots halted a four-day strike last month after their union agreed to resume talks on the first day of the walkout, is up 4.3 per cent in Frankfurt this year.
Virgin Atlantic Airways said last week that bookings have increased as a result of the strife at BA, with traffic up three per cent in December, the month cabin crew at its rival voted for a Christmas walkout that was later blocked by a UK court.
Allies of BA in the Oneworld alliance are also taking steps to help add capacity on services to the UK.
Finnair Oyj will fly larger aircraft on the Helsinki-London route, adding 20 seats per flight, spokesman Taneli Hassinen said.
Iberia will also add bigger planes between Madrid and London, together with one extra flight, a spokeswoman said. American Airlines, the world's second-largest carrier, is allowing passengers on Heathrow flights operated by it or BA through March 31 to make one change to tickets without penalty, or to request a full refund, spokesman Tim Smith said.