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British Airways Pilots Present Offer in Bid to Avoid Walkout

British Airways Pilots Present New Offer in Bid to Avoid Walkout

(Bloomberg) -- British Airways pilots put forward a new contract proposal and pledged to call off a planned walkout if management returns to the bargaining table.

The British Airline Pilots’ Association said it made the proposal directly to Alex Cruz, chief executive officer of the IAG SA unit. Without meaningful discussions, strikes scheduled for Monday and Tuesday will go ahead, the group said. Balpa has also scheduled industrial action on Sept. 27.

In an updated statement, the airline said it’s available for talks, but that the union was not acting in good faith by making “an eleventh hour inflated proposal” which would cost an additional 50 million pounds ($62 million).

Warding off walkouts would lower the threat to earnings and passenger disruption at British Airways, the biggest U.K. airline operating hundreds of flights every day across Heathrow and other London airports. The pilot union called a strike after mediated talks with management at the state-backed Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service ended without a deal.

‘Cynical’

“Balpa has cynically waited until we have helped the vast majority of customers with alternative travel arrangements, and our planning for a strike has reached a critical stage,” the airline said of the latest overtures. “Customers need the certainty that Balpa will call off the strikes for good, not just for two days next week.”

The labor action is timed for the tail end of the peak season for European travel. BA’s lucrative long-haul routes helped lift IAG’s second-quarter operating profit 18%, the best performance among top European carriers.

Cockpit crews voted to strike by a 93% majority in a poll in July, with the carrier saying the disruption could cost 40 million pounds a day.

Balpa is also campaigning at Ryanair Holdings Plc, where U.K. pilots plan to walk out for an additional seven days. Five days of strikes failed to disrupt schedules or bring the discounter -- which uses many non-union contract pilots -- back to the bargaining table.

To contact the reporter on this story: Siddharth Philip in London at sphilip3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Christopher Jasper

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