There is disagreement over the impact of a three day strike by British Airways cabin crew.

BA has retrained a thousand staff to stand in temporarily, found passengers flights on rival airlines and chartered aircraft to fly other routes.

“The operation is working very well, in fact we are doing better than we had expected, we have been able to operate every flight that we have planned and indeed have introduced a couple of extra flights. We are carrying all the customers that we had promised to fly today, so I am really pleased that the contingency plans have worked, in fact they have worked better than I thought,” said Chief Executive Willie Walsh.

But the union says 80 percent of cabin crew had backed the strike and BA had only been able to fly a third of flights they had scheduled.

“They want a war, they want to try and take on this group of workers and we believe that that is shortsighted. I think it is 1970’s-style management paranoia,” said a union spokesperson.

Unite has warned the knock-on disruption may get worse over the next few days. A further strike is planned between the 27th and 30th of March, and will coincide with the Easter holidays.

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