travdog

Hi,

I can't seem to find any (non-vague) info about the possibility of another Heathrow strike this coming weekend.

I've checked some London papers and the net, but am coming up frustratingly empty handed.

Anyone have any idea what is going on and what the possibiliy of delay is?

flanneruk

Do you think this might possibly be Nature's way of telling you there IS no threat of a strike?

London's airports employ several hundred thousand people in thousands of companies. Some of those workers are represented by dozens of unions but most, like all sensible people, don't waste time joining these destructive anachronisms.

On soft news days, London's newspapers blow up unions' normal posturings into "Chaos threatens" headlines, which these days get picked up by the Web instantly. They hardly ever turn into anything, except a slightly improved employer offer.

Googling on 'Heathrow Strike' (try the UK version of Google News) will tell you that last week's stories came to nothing: the whole thing fizzled out on Thursday, a few minutes after one of the more excitable and sloppy web sites carried its breathless "strike chaos at Heathrow looks inevitable this weekend" nonsense.

travdog

Thaaaaat's what I thought!

Nature does, indeed, try to tell me things every day, so why not tell me about a faux strike.

I did see some follow up news on this but it didn't actually say whether or not the strike actually happened, which I took to be a good sign.

I saw the first article last week on yahoo news, but I was suspiscious as the provider of the article was the that institution of proper journalism, the Daily Mail.

By the way, flanneruk, I have to tell you that I repeated your hysterical, spot-on observation of the Diana fountain (your reply to my question about new things in London post) to no less than two friends today. You had three 30 something women in Southern California having a good laugh over that one.

PatrickLondon

I think it's Gatwick. BAA were saying that passengers hadn't been affected. But then, they would say that, wouldn't they?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3688654.stm

TopMan

The last time I flew into Heathrow the luggage took so long to get on the carousel I thought they WERE on strike!!
So long, in fact, that my pre-arranged driver finally left the airport without me!

Kate_W

The British Airways Executive Club message board on flyertalk.com is a good place to monitor current developments (strike news etc) affecting airports in Britain. There are a lot of frequent, UK-based business travellers who use that forum, so you'll get quite current information (often better than official sources at alerting you to potential problems).