The Public and Commercial Services union on Wednesday (7 December) confirmed Border Force workers would walk out for eight days over 23-26 December and 28-31 December in a dispute over pay pensions, jobs and redundancy.
Action will take place at six UK airports – Birmingham, Cardiff, Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow (Terminals 2-5) and Manchester – as well as at the Port of Newhaven. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, said the strikes would have a "major effect" on people using the UK’s public services.
Advantage Travel Partnership chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said said the strikes risked damaging consumer confidence in travel and plunging the country back into the "chaos" that followed the lifting of the UK’s Covid travel restrictions earlier this year.
New data from flight analytics firm Cirium issued on Wednesday revealed 10,072 flights are scheduled to arrive at the six affected airports during the strike period, equating to more than two million seats.
The impact will be felt most severely at Heathrow where there are 4,724 scheduled arrivals between 23 December and 31 December, totalling just over a million seats – just shy of half of all those set to be affected.
Next in line is Gatwick with 2,476 arrivals (475,483 seats) and then Manchester with 1,494 arrivals (291,733 seats). There are 744 flights due to arrive at Birmingham (127,470) seats during the strike, 579 (79,494) at Glasgow and 55 (7,424) at Cardiff.
Speaking during Abta’s Travel Matters seminar on Tuesday (6 December), Airport Operators Association policy director Christopher Snelling said he believed airports would cope, with the government understood to be drawing up contingency measures – including deploying army resources.
However, Manchester airport has already warned there will likely be both delays and cancellations as a result of the strikes, which will affect people’s transit through passport control.
