BAA staff to strike in 2008

Last Modified: 21 Dec 2007
By: Lindsay Taylor, Katie Razzall

Flying hell - four strikes set to shut down the UK's biggest airports in the New Year.

It's the news air travellers dread - in the new year, strikes planned at all the British Airports Authority airports, 7 in total, in a row over BAA's plans to shut the final salary pension scheme to new entrants.

Almost two thirds of the 3,000 unite members who voted chose industrial action - it's inevitable airports will close as key staff including fire-fighters, security guards and airfield employees refuse to work.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton the airports affected - almost 400,000 travellers pass through them every day.

Today at Heathrow the Christmas getaway begun in earnest - 3.5 million people expected to fly in the next few days - travellers today taking a fairly relaxed attitude to the potential problems they may face on their return.

The unions said today they'd deliberately held off striking to protect festive season travellers - there'll be two 24 hour walk-outs on January 7th and 14th and a 48 hour strike on January 17th.

Virgin cabin crew have already said they'll strike in January for the first time ever.