Catering on British Airways flights will be hit for the rest of the month as a result of the strike by cabin crew which ended today, union leaders claimed.
Officials at Unite said passengers on long-haul flights would be served only cold salads and sandwiches, and no alcohol would be available. The union claimed the reduced catering service will be in place until at least March 30 as a knock-on effect of the three-day walk-out by thousands of employees.
Flights started to return to normal today, although BA had to cancel a handful of incoming services to Heathrow, including those from San Francisco, Tokyo, Dubai, and Calgary in Canada.
The airline said the three-day strike had cost it around £21m sterling, although Unite disputed the figure and said it believed it was much higher.
BA said the vast majority of flights this week will operate as normal and customers will be able to travel as planned, with all flights operating at Gatwick and London City.
An airline spokesman said: 'The knock-on impact at Heathrow is far less than anticipated due to the numbers of cabin crew who came to work as normal over the past weekend'.
'We have a complex global operation which has to co-ordinate the rosters of over 13,000 cabin crew, 3,000 pilots and 230 aircraft which all need to be in the right place at the right time across 140 destinations in more than 70 countries,' it said.
BA added that contingency plans to cope with the strike had been 'very successful', and results for the year to March 31 would be 'broadly unchanged'.
Based on the estimates, BA would be left with a total bill of almost £50m if a four-day strike due to start on Saturday goes ahead, although the airline said the cost of any action could be assessed only after the event.
Over the first two days of the action, BA said it operated 273, or 78%, of long-haul flights, and 442, or 50%, of its short-haul flights. The airline also ran 70 positioning flights - which in most cases carried cargo - to return passengers home with minimum disruption.
The company said it began the weekend with 82,573 bookings for the two days after reservation teams worked with customers to reduce bookings, although it actually carried 86,262 passengers after late bookings.
Although BA said the outlook for the year was unchanged, it remains on course for record losses after racking up pre-tax loss of £342m in the nine months to December 31. The latest slide into the red follows losses of £401m in the 12 months to last March as the firm was hit by recession and soaring oil prices.
