British Airways and union agree 13% pay rise for 24,000 staff

Receive free International Airlines Group updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest International Airlines Group news every morning.

Around 24,000 workers at British Airways have accepted a deal that will increase their pay by 13 per cent, the union Unite announced on Friday.

Employees at the airline will receive the rise over a period of 18 months alongside a one-off payment of £1,000, Unite said. The agreement, which excludes pilots and management and came after several months of negotiations, included the potential for pay to increase further if inflation remains high.

The airline industry has been trying to avoid a repeat of last year’s travel chaos that was caused by sector-wide staff shortages, with companies failing to recruit new staff quickly enough when borders reopened after the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday, the German flagship carrier Lufthansa offered its pilots a significant pay rise, as it sought to avert strikes during the busy summer holiday season. 

Lufthansa said the offer was equivalent to a pay rise of at least a 25 per cent for captains and between 33 per cent and 50 per cent for co-pilots, according to an internal memo seen by the Financial Times. The carrier’s pilots have until August 10 to vote on a deal.

Other parts of the aviation industry have also been trying to avert travel disruptions, with ground handling staff at Gatwick offered pay increases in July.

The aviation industry suffered huge disruption last year as it struggled to meet soaring post-pandemic demand. From the start of May to mid-August, a quarter of flights in US, UK and European airspace were disrupted, delayed or cancelled. Labour shortages ranged from pilots to cabin crew, ground staff and air traffic controllers.

This year, air travel continued to be disrupted by staffing shortages at air traffic control, which have delayed passengers in Europe in a busy holiday season and forced US airlines to cut flights. French controllers have been staging disruptive walkouts throughout the first half of the year while staff at Eurocontrol had also warned of possible strikes,

As well as the sizeable pay increase, the latest agreement between BA and Unite also reversed the airline’s controversial decision at the height of the Covid pandemic to fire and rehire its entire workforce, the union said.

This year’s deal comes as strike action for check-in staff was averted in July 2022 when the Unite union announced that it had agreed a “vastly improved” deal that amounted to an average pay rise of 13 per cent. The agreement was then enacted across BA’s workforce.

Stephen Furlong, aviation analyst at Davy, said “relations between workers and management at BA [as well as] parent company International Airlines Group are improving.”