FLIGHTS
Thousands delayed at Heathrow
Posted Tue, 24 Aug 2004

Thousands of British Airways passengers at London's Heathrow Airport faced delays on Tuesday after the airline was hit by a combination of staff shortages and technical problems, it said.

The hold-ups, which forced the cancellation of 25 flights, came just ahead of Britain's end of August three-day weekend, traditionally one of the busiest periods of the year for air travel.

BA had faced a strike by baggage handlers and check-in staff this weekend, but headed it off at the last minute with an improved pay offer for staff.

The latest troubles began on Monday afternoon when the airline cancelled three flights to the United States due to technical problems with the aircraft.

Disruption caused by finding new seats for passengers on these flights exacerbated existing problems caused by staff shortages and led to the cancellation of another 22 flights.

Thousands of passengers had been affected and delays were likely to continue into Tuesday, a BA spokeswoman said.

"We apologise sincerely to those customers affected by the disruption to flights at Heathrow Airport yesterday," she said. "Due to a number of operational reasons we have cancelled 25 flights and some services have been delayed. August is the busiest period of the year for British Airways and services at Heathrow are stretched."

She added: "We have also had some technical problems with our aircraft and these combined has resulted in the cancellations. Our staff are working extremely hard to ensure operations return to normal."

I used to really enjoy transfering through Heathrow. Now it's just a good place to avoid!

Rich Elliott

Same thing happened last year. My wife and I were in Europe and arrived at Heathrow to come back to the States. As we were checking in, the British Airways Check In staff just walked off the job. Something about the time cards being changed to a credit card type card. Harder for employees to "punch-in" for co-workers that had not arrived at work on time.

We were stranded for 3 days, but American Airlines got us out on the first plane they had available. More than 80,000 travelers were stranded. British Airways was having to fly out empty planes to make room for incoming planes to all parts of the globe. That strike must have cost them millions.