British Airways will have the contingency plans in place to fly “100 percent” of its long-haul flights should any further cabin crew strike action take place over the summer, according to Paolo de Renzis, British Airways area commercial manager, Middle East.
“We hope not to see more disruptions in the future, but many of our cabin crew have been supportive anyway so we could still operate most of our long haul and short haul flights. If there is another disruption our plan is to operate 100 percent of our long haul flights," he said.
He added that the Middle East had “not been too badly affected” by the strikes. “Of course in some stations we went through challenging times – flights to Bahrain, Doha and Jeddah have been cancelled quite a few times, but all the others have not been affected.”
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De Renzis was speaking at an event to announce the winners of British Airways Business Opportunity Grants in the UAE, an initiative designed to stimulate business travel. Thirty small and medium sized UAE businesses received 10 return flights on British Airways Club World (business class).
“In an economic crisis one of the first things companies are capping is the business travel budget and of course we don’t believe this is the right solution,” said de Renzis.
“It might be a short term fix but not a long term solution because in the long term cutting business travel will damage the business so we thought that as part of our commitment to business travel we wanted to launch a campaign to encourage small and medium sized companies which have been hit more than others during the economic crisis to re-start doing business.”
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