June 21 - British Airways (BA) bookings for scheduled flights from the UAE have gone down by 50 per cent this summer because of cabin crew strikes.

Adeel Ahmed, Supervisor of the Outbound Department at Belhasa Tourism and Travel in Dubai said when bookings for this summer are compared to those earlier this year before industrial action began the difference is almost half.
“We do tell [passengers] about the risk of their flight being canceled,” he explained.

Sunil De Souza, Regional Travel Manager for the UAE and Oman at Kanoo Travel, also said that the disruption in BA services “has had an impact on sales.”

Paolo De Renzis, Area Commercial Manager for Middle East, BA, said that regardless of the cabin crew strikes “the underlying traffic volume continues to show a modest year-on-year improvement in premium traffic and non-premium traffic levels.” “As always our customers are the priority and we will do all we can to keep British Airways flying. Our CEO recently committed to flying 100 per cent of long-haul flights if there is another strike in the coming months.”