British Airways strike: Passengers outnumbered by airport staff amid flight chaos

Not since the ash cloud in 2010, when an Icelandic volcano shut down UK aviation for nearly a week, has Heathrow Terminal 5 been so quiet.

On the first morning of a two-day pilots’ strike at British Airways, passengers could fly anywhere they wished, so long as it was Tokyo, Cairo (on Air Belgium) or Madrid (on Iberia).

A bitter pay dispute between BA and the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) has grounded almost all flights to and from what is normally the airport’s busiest terminal.

Many long-haul international arrivals were culled, to avoid Heathrow filling up with grounded BA planes. Among those that did arrive was a flight from Sydney via Singapore. An Australian couple, weary after the 24-hour trip, said they had had to travel two days’ earlier than planned because of the stoppage.

The only short-haul arrival will be a single service from Edinburgh.

At Caffe Nero on the Departures level, baristas easily outnumbered customers. A trickle of smartly dressed British Airways ground staff bought coffee, and looked around for passengers to help.

They were thin on the ground, because the vast majority of the almost 200,000 passengers booked on BA during the strike have been handed their money back, transferred to other flights on the airline or been rebooked on other carriers.

Inevitably, some travellers did not get the message. Teresa McKeon had arrived at Heathrow Terminal 3, by air, on the longest possible flight: the 17-hour nonstop Qantas flight from Perth in Western Australia. She had a “confirmed” connection to Dublin on British Airways from Terminal 5.

During her four-week stay in Australia Ms McKeon had not had word of the strike, nor of BA’s blanket cancellations on Monday and Tuesday. No-one during her journey or on arrival alerted her to the fact that her best hope was a flight on Aer Lingus.

The Independent told her of the shutdown. At least there were multiple British Airways staff on hand to try to rebook her and direct her back to the central area at Heathrow.

Earlier in the morning, one or two journalists showed up to discreetly survey the wide-open spaces of Terminal 5, before retreating back to the media’s usual encampment beside the Three Magpies pub – overlooking the tunnel to the central area, the miniature Emirates Airbus A380 and the northern runway.

Sadly for the sake of their live appearances, departures were thin on the ground. With more than half of Heathrow’s departures grounded, take-offs seemed reduced to every five or 10 minutes. For local residents, the frequency of air movements was back to the 1970s – which is where the dispute also seems to be be heading.

As the biggest strike in the history of British Airways grounds almost all the airline’s flights, BA and the pilots’ union look further apart than ever.