Search: BA cabin crew strike
Strike-hit British Airways has said the airline had got off to a "good start" as its plans to cope with a mass walkout of cabin crew staff swung into action.
But the three-day strike by an estimated 12,000 BA cabin crew - their first in 13 years - was expected to cause disruption for thousands of passengers.
A spokeswoman for BA said that the airline had "got off to a good start" as it implemented contingency plans at UK hub airports.
The Unite union, in contrast, claimed a number of planes were starting to stack up at airports as a result of the strike. The union claimed there were 85 parked planes at Heathrow, 20 at Cardiff and 20 in Shannon.
Unite said early indications were that its 12,000 members were solidly supporting the three-day walkout, which started at midnight in a bitter dispute over cost cutting.
Picket lines were mounted at airports including Heathrow, and Unite said that no buses which normally transport crew to work, had crossed picket lines.
BA said that a number of long-haul flights were running without passengers so planes could be in the right place when the strike ends.
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The company said it was confident of handling as many as 49,000 passengers on Saturday and the same number on Sunday, which compares with a figure of around 75,000 for a normal weekend day in March.
BA later confirmed that around 50% of cabin crew staff had turned up for work at Heathrow as normal.
As a result, BA is now moving to reinstate some short and long-haul flights. A BA spokeswoman said: "Cabin crew are continuing to report as normal at Gatwick and the numbers reporting at Heathrow are above the levels we needed to operate our published schedule. At Heathrow, around 50% of cabin crew have reported as normal and we are therefore increasing the number of long-haul and short-haul flights in our schedule in the days ahead."
