British Airways (BA) cabin staff are preparing for strike action in a dispute over pay.
The Unite trade union has notified BA that cabin crew members working for the carrier's mixed fleet are ready to hold four more days of strikes, starting on 16 June, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
The strike is yet to be confirmed, however, as union representatives are “considering some new information”, the spokeswoman said, adding that the union was now legally required to give two weeks' notice before action takes place.
Cabin crew members in the mixed fleet are in a long-running dispute over pay, and have been on strike several times already in 2017.
The dispute predates last weekend's IT systems failure at BA, which stranded 75,000 customers, and is not connected.
BA has previously said that it has been able to fly all customers to their destinations during strike action by members of the mixed fleet crew. The carrier said “strike action is completely unnecessary”.
Meanwhile, the catastrophic IT failure that trapped thousands of passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick nearly a week ago may have been caused by a staff blunder, reports said.
According to The Times, the incident likely concerned an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) designed to deliver a smooth flow of power from the mains with a link to pack-up energy.
British Airways’ parent company, International Airlines Group, said a key data centre lost power and an uncontrolled reboot of the system subsequently shut down the entire system.
Citing a source, The Times said it was rumoured a maintenance contractor had accidentally switched the supply off.
However contractor CBRE, which manages a BA data centre near Heathrow, told The Guardian on Friday no conclusion had been reached about the cause.
Additional reporting by agencies
