Monday, Nov 28, 2011


 
   By David Pearson, Alex Delmar-Morgan, and Nicholas Winning 
   Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways, two leading Middle East carriers, said Monday they have canceled flights to London's Heathrow Airport Wednesday to spare passengers long delays expected because of a planned strike by immigration staff.

The cancellations come as airport-operator BAA said it is discussing contingency plans with airlines ahead of the protest over pension reform by U.K. public-sector workers that includes border-control officers at Heathrow, the world's busiest airport.

"We are very concerned by the impact that UKBA immigration officer strike action will have on passengers at Heathrow," a BAA official said Monday. BAA is gathering the latest information on passenger numbers to assess the scale of its response to the proposed strike, the official said.

BAA took the unusual step Friday of requesting carriers using Heathrow Wednesday to fly aircraft only half-full as it warned of "gridlock" and delays of up to 12 hours in processing incoming passengers.

German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG (LHA.XE) said it would follow BAA's advice partly because its planes are already flying not far from half-empty. It said it had no plans to cancel flights at this stage.

In contrast, Dubai-based Emirates, which flies giant Airbus A380s into Heathrow and Manchester airports, said it would cancel one inbound and one outbound flight to Heathrow Wednesday. "There is likely to be significant disruption and extensive delays for arriving and departing passengers in and out of the U.K.," an Emirates official said. "Passengers are being encouraged to consider travelling on alternate days," the official added.

Abu Dhabi-based Etihad has canceled three flights, two flying from its home base to Heathrow and one from London to the United Arab Emirates capital.

Other airlines remained more circumspect. KLM, the Dutch wing of the Air France-KLM (AF.FR) group, said it had no plans to cancel flights. "For now, it's business as usual," a spokeswoman said. Nordic airlines Finnair (FIA1S.HE) and SAS (SAS.SK) said they haven't canceled any flights but have encouraged passengers to reschedule. Some passengers have canceled tickets, Finnair said.

Other carriers like United Continental Holdings and British Airways warned over the weekend of long delays Wednesday though they are yet to cancel flights. Meanwhile, Eurostar, the high-speed passenger rail service between the U.K. and mainland Europe, said Monday it doesn't expect any disruptions for its passengers.

Unions representing more than 2 million teachers, passport-control officers and other public workers are planning a one-day strike Wednesday. The government says reforms are necessary to reduce the country's GBP32 billion annual pension bill and make public pensions more sustainable, but unions say they are unfair and unnecessary. The two sides have failed to reach an agreement despite months of talks and an improved offer this month.

The U.K. education minister, meanwhile, on Monday called on public sector workers to abandon their strike plans, saying it would cause the closure of more than 90% of schools and force thousands of parents to scrabble around for emergency childcare or ask for the day off work. The U.K. Treasury has estimated the strike could cost the economy GBP500 million

In comments that are likely to raise the temperature as the strike looms, Mr. Gove said that although there were union leaders that he respected who worked hard for their members, there were also hardliners and militants that were itching for a fight with the government.

"They want families to be inconvenienced," Mr. Gove said. "They want scenes of industrial strife on our TV screens; they want to make economic recovery harder; they want to provide a platform for confrontation just when we all need to pull together."

-By David Pearson, Alex Delmar-Morgan, and Nicholas Winning, Dow Jones Newswires; +33 (0)1 40 17 17 40 david.pearson@dowjones.com (Jan Hromadko and Christina Zander also contributed to this item.)

Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Co.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

28-11-11 1544GMT