Dubai : The three-day strike period by British Airways crew will come to an end today with an estimated 40 per cent of customers affected in some way.
Meanwhile, the labour union Unite is preparing to conduct a second strike from March 27 to March 30.
The airline cancelled one if its three daily flights on its Dubai-London route and its daily Bahrain-London service over the weekend. It has not proposed an altered flight schedule for the coming strike yet.
"At this stage the vast majority of flights between March 23 and 31 remain in the schedule and we will update customers due to fly during the second strike period after the first strike period has ended," the airline said in a statement.
Fares in Dubai for the second strike period have already jumped by up to 66 per cent due to high demand and apprehensions about short supply.
Main beneficiaries
"We have had to make a shift to other airlines. Our clients had to do it a little bit in advance, knowing they [the union] were serious about the strike," Premjit Bangara, travel manager at agency Sharaf Travel told Gulf News.
Traffic from British Airways has been moved to Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and also carriers flying indirectly to England such as KLM and Lufthansa.
"The major beneficiaries are Virgin and Emirates because they fly directly [to destinations affected by the strike]," Bangara said. "Flights were already going full because of Easter demand. Some of these fares were pretty high."
While normal fares at this time of the year range from Dh3,000 to Dh3,500, airlines have now raised them to nearly Dh5,000.
"Airlines are booking more profit on this," Bangara said.
Emirates was not available for immediate comment. British Airways has an agreement with 40 carriers on which passengers can be rebooked free of charge during the strike if they had been due to travel on a BA flight which was cancelled.
"We remain absolutely determined to search for a sensible settlement and our door remains open to Unite, day or night.
"It is not too late for Unite to call off this action and we will do all we can to reinstate some of the cancelled flights," Willie Walsh, British Airways chief executive, said earlier.
Unite called the strike after a string of attempts to maintain staff numbers and their salaries collapsed. BA said it would make 1,700 staff redundant and put a two-year freeze on basic pay for cabin crew.
