News Archive

Airports face strike action.

Airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton could be hit by strike action tomorrow by members of the PCS union which includes immigration staff.

The 24 hour strike on 24 April is expected to close around a quarter of the UK’s schools. But it could also lead to delays at passport control if sufficient numbers of immigration workers back the strike.

As well as airports, ports could also be hit, including the Port of Dover which is an important gateway to the continent. Coastguards are also staging a 24 hour strike starting at 7pm tonight. This is their third strike this year, and previous strikes led to the closure of around half of the UK’s rescue coordination centres. The PCS also advised the public to avoid going to sea except for essential journeys.

Altogether around 400,000 people are expected to take part in the PCS strike tomorrow, and as well as airports and ports, driving test centres, benefit offices and the Land Registry could be affected.

Members of the PCS union are striking over the government’s plan to offer pay rises amounting to less than 2% each year for the next three years. Home Office staff are only expected to get a 1% pay rise.

Prospect of BAA break-up moves closer.

The prospect of a break-up of airports operator BAA moved closer today as the Competition Commission said that such a move could lead to increased competition in both the south-east of England and Scotland.

In an interim report the commission said it was "inclined to the view that common ownership of the BAA airports is a feature of the market which adversely affects competition between airports and/or airlines".

The commission made clear that it had not yet reached any conclusions but expects to publish the provisional findings of its inquiry into the impact of BAA's ownership of seven airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen - later this year.

Avalanche buries Austrian street.

A large avalanche has buried a street near a popular Austrian ski resort under four metres of snow, with authorities warning of a "substantial" risk that more may follow.

Rescue workers searching the road in Imst, in the province of Tyrol, do not believe anyone was buried in the avalanche.

Imst is near Soelden, which hosts world cup skiing competitions and attracts hundreds of thousands of recreational skiers and snowboarders.

Authorities said heavy rainfall across the region in the hours before the avalanche may have triggered the slide.

Austria's avalanche monitoring agency today warned that the risk of snow slides above 1,800m was "substantial". The alert level has been raised to three on a five-point scale.

Aer Lingus apologises over cheap flights error.

Aer Lingus is offering economy class seats to customers who booked business class flights to the USA for just 5 euros following a technical error on its website last Wednesday.

Originally Aer Lingus refused to honour the bookings claiming customers should have realised it was an error. But the airline now appears to have bowed to pressure from the public and the Consumers' Association of Ireland.

Flybe grows fastest in Germany.

Flybe has been named as the fastest growing low cost airline flying to and from Germany.

Budget airline Flybe now offers 128 flights a week to Germany, compared to just 26 flights in 2006/7, an increase of 392%. The statistics are published in the latest ‘Low Cost Monitor’ survey from the German Centre for Aero- and Spacetravel, which tracks the development of low fares airlines operating to and from Germany.