The nearly 13,000 members of the British Airways cabin crew union, Unite, are preparing for a three-day strike beginning Saturday, March 20, with a second strike date planned for March 27. Unite is protesting pay freezes and other imposed changes to employee working conditions. To make matters worse, British Airways management is actively recruiting replacement cabin crews to fill in, or scab, if the Unite members conduct their planned work stoppage.

ALPA is monitoring this situation closely and is in regular contact with other labor leaders through its affiliation with the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA). We recommend that ALPA members avoid all travel on British Airways until the strikes are concluded. Maintaining this policy should prevent ALPA members from having to directly cross Unite strike lines in front of airports.

We also encourage ALPA members to take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety and security of both their crews and flights, particularly if the Unite strikes escalate to include ground staff who service flights of ALPA-member carriers.

Please note that the our fellow IFALPA affiliate, the British Air Line Pilots’ Association (BALPA), has yet to request assistance for its pilot crews who may be in North America at the time of the Unite job action. We will address any such appeals, when and if they are made.

Unite is an affiliate of ITF (the International Transport Workers’ Federation), a global organization with 751 member trade unions, representing more than 4,600,000 members in 154 countries.

Look for more information in future FastReads. If you have questions about this situation or experience any irregularities, we encourage you to contact your elected ALPA representatives and/or the ALPA Strategic Preparedness and Strike Committee at SPSC@alpa.org.