Heathrow Passenger Rush Precedes Easter Strike

Heathrow Airport is braced to deal with an influx of passengers today as the UK's Easter holidays get underway.

With the Easter weekend still some days away, the UK's flagship airport is nonetheless prepared for 30 March to be the break's busiest period.

The Easter weekend itself could see luggage backlogs develop at another site, London Stansted Airport, on Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Monday, after the hub's baggage workers said they'd be going on strike.

Stansted Airport Strike
The London Stansted Airport strike action's related to shift alterations imposed by Swissport Stansted which, its workers claim, could leave them up to £1,000 a year out of pocket.

In a statement, however, Swissport stressed that London Stansted's Easter weekend operations would be unaffected and that there's no prospect of disruption.

"Swissport is disappointed that the GMB trade union has decided to call industrial action. The company wants to avoid redundancies", general manager Richard Prince added in comments quoted by the BBC.

He continued: "The proposed changes to working patterns will achieve a proportion of the necessary savings we need to make to offset our decline in revenue and it means we will avoid job losses. We are not cutting peoples' pay. We are not increasing the amount of hours they work. We are asking people to spread their contractual hours over a five-day week and not a four-day week. We are keeping people in jobs." 

Easter Heathrow Passengers
Today's pre-Easter Heathrow passenger rush is expected to see the UK's largest airport handle some 220,000 travellers and, between now and 15 April, approximately 3.4 million.

Meanwhile, Gatwick Airport is predicting that 1.5 million passengers will pass through over the next two weeks. The most popular Easter holiday destination for Gatwick Airport's passengers is expected to be Dublin, with Spain's Malaga in second place and Italy's Milan coming in third


Source: Airport International

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