Strike in Britain delays Finnair flights

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Nearly 200 passengers en route to Finland on Thursday evening were forced to spend the night at London's Heathrow Airport by a strike affecting British Airways ground staff.
      In addition to British Airways, the stoppage affects Finnair and three other airlines using British Airways ground services at Heathrow.
      The action, which began as a labour dispute over planned redundancies in a company providing catering services for British Airways, later spread to airport ground services, including flight check-in.
      The strike forced the Finnish airline Finnair to cancel its evening return flights to Helsinki.
      Thursday's last flight to London was delayed by more than an hour, and it flew to Gatwick Airport instead of Heathrow.
      Finnair's Friday flights to London, at 8:00 a.m. 14:05 p.m., have both been cancelled. British Airways also cancelled its departures.
     
When the strike ends, Finnair hopes to fly to Heathrow with a larger aircraft than usual in order to accommodate as many passengers as possible.
      The stoppage, which is expected to last all day Friday, affected an estimated 20,000 air passengers at airports in Britain and elsewhere on Thursday and the numbers are only expected to rise today: British Airways has cancelled all flights until at least 6:00 p.m. this evening.


Links:
  Finnair website
  British Airways - latest flight news
  More chaos over cancelled flights (BBC)

Helsingin Sanomat