British Airways announces plans to shed 400 cabin crew jobs

BRITISH Airways has announced it is looking to shed 400 senior cabin crew jobs.

However, the airline stressed that there would be no compulsory redundancies.

Around 1,500 BA employees are based in Scotland.

An airline spokesman said that it had entered into a 90-day consultation with the Unite union about the possibility of making voluntary redundancy available to 400 cabin crew staff.

Those being offered the redundancy package would be senior cabin crew employees, such as pursers and cabin service directors who work either exclusively on long-haul and exclusively on short-haul services. The package will not be available to those whose work is categorised as “mixed” fleet, who operate on both long-haul and short-haul flights.

BA, which had a damaging months-long cabin crew dispute that ended last year, has about 14,000 cabin crew in total.

CRAIG BROWN