BA faces more strikes

Staff at British Airways are expected to celebrate the airline's last day of trading on the London Stock Exchange as BA by voting for further strike action.The carrier's £5.7bn merger with Spain's Iberia should complete today, almost 24 years after it was privatised by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.Shares in the new holding company, International Consolidated Airlines Group, will begin trading on Monday and rank as the third-largest airline in the world.But members of the Unite union are still fuming about pay and conditions for cabin crew and the way workers were treated during last year's strikes.Results of the latest ballot are published today and more industrial action is predicted in the Spring, heaping more misery on thousands of passengers.The dispute has been running for almost two years and cost BA £150m. An agreement looked to be near a few months ago, but that deal fell apart.Unite wants BA to reinstate travel concessions for striking staff and agree to an external review of all disciplinary cases against members.BA is confident it can keep its planes in the air whatever happens."Should any industrial action take place, we are confident that our well-established contingency plans will allow us to operate normal timetables at Gatwick and London City airports," it said last night. "At Heathrow, we will aim to run a substantial proportion of our short-haul programme and 100% of our long haul operation." Bay Capital