Easter holidays could be cancelled as passengers warned of 'severe' travel disruptions

Security officers at Heathrow airport have announced they will go on strike this Easter in a movewhich is expected to cause severe delays and disruption to holidaymakers' plans. The industrial action will take place from 31 March for 10 days and will involve 1,400 staff walking out.

Passengers are being warned to prepare for cancellations and are advised to allow a lot of time for passing through the airport as long queues will cause significant delays.

Unite strike action

The industrial action will start on Friday 31 March and go on until Easter Sunday 9 April and is expected to mostly affect Heathrow’s Terminal Five.

Heathrow have said in a statement that the airport will remain, ‘open and operational despite unnecessary threats of strike action by Unite’, adding, as per The Express:

Threatening to ruin people's hard-earned holidays with strike action will not improve the deal. We want to do the right thing by our people and our passengers, each day only delays this pay rise reaching Unite members' pockets.

The airport claims to have offered a 10% increase in pay but Unite say that this does not compensate for years of pay freezes.

Unite union secretary general Sharon Graham said members are ‘simply unable to make ends meet due to the low wages’, as per the BBC:

It is the airport's workers who are fundamental to its success and they deserve a fair pay increase.

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Passport Office strike

The latest airport strike comes as over 1,000 Passport Office staff across the UK also announced they will go on a five-week strike, also in a dispute over pay and working conditions.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union across England, Scotland and Wales will strike from 3 April to 5 May and workers in Belfast will strike from 7 April to 5 May. The action is expected to bring further disruption to travellers as April is one of the busiest months where up to 250,000 passport applications can be received in one week.

The union has warned travellers that the strike will have a significant impact on the processing and delivery of passports. Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of The Advantage Travel Partnership, gave this advice to holidaymakers, as per The Express:

Our advice to travellers, should they need passports or to renew existing ones, is to action these as soon as possible to minimise any disruption to their travel plans. We urge the Government and the unions to find a way of dealing with this dispute urgently to ensure that it doesn’t affect British travellers and impact the outbound travel industry.

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Sources used:

- The Express 'British holidaymakers to face airport chaos and 'severe delays' this Easter - warning'

- BBC 'Heathrow security to strike for 10 days including Easter'