I’ve been a little concerned with the news that London airports will be experiencing workers striking and flights could be affected. From what I read, it looks like the strike for August 23 and 24th is still on. We are flying out of New York on August 22 and will arrive in London on August 23. I’m hoping we can avoid it. It looks like airlines are responsible for compensating travelers because of strikes and missed flights, but I’ve never had to deal with this before and I’m only going by what I’m reading. Does anyone have any experience in this area? I’m wondering if travel insurance would be helpful in this case?
Posted by
Missouri, USA and Essex, UK.
1055 posts
Kristen,
I am far from up to date on the latest with the airport strikes, but I believe the previous strike date was avoided but not before many flights were cancelled. Travel Insurance is a must not only for health coverage but also for events such as these. In 2017, I had a flight switch in Chicago and ended up going to LHR instead of Dublin. When we landed at LHR, British Airways was having an IT meltdown. It was horrendous. We never did make it to Dublin and were told to just leave the airport. A long story, but we were compensated by Travel guard for missed connections, excursions, hotel expenses, (anything we could not get money back on) and checked luggage that was never seen again! so, If I was flying into LHR on such a day, I would try to take hand luggage only. This way you can change flights/destinations quickly if need be with all your items. British airways did not pay anything in terms of compensation to us. They offered us a flight to Dublin 3 days later. We were only suppose to be in Dublin for 3 days. So we stayed in the UK.
Margaret
Posted by
OP
New York
521 posts
Thanks so much, Margaret. Is there anyone living in the UK that might have more information on the strike?
Posted by
Freedonia
16416 posts
I'm in the UK and am loosely following the strike news.
There was supposed to be a strike last Tuesday but was called off when Heathrow made a new offer to the union. That offer was good enough that it is being offered to the union members for a vote. To worry about it now is a waste of time because anything can happen between now and the 23rd.
However, here is a page Heathrow Airport has put out about airport operations during a strike:
https://www.heathrow.com/more/help-with-this-website/faqs/industrial-action
Posted by
OP
New York
521 posts
Many thanks, Frank.
Posted by
Portsmouth
5555 posts
With strikes such as these the airlines (BA in particular) tend to cancel the flights that will have the least impact both financially and for those concerned, these flights tend to be some of the intra European ones. It's rare that they'd cancel a long haul flight, things have to be pretty dire when they do that.
Posted by
OP
New York
521 posts
Thanks, JC!