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A union leader has offered to suspend strikes by British Airways cabin crew if the airline gave back travel concessions, in a last-gasp attempt to halt the action.
Tony Woodley, joint leader of Unite, said there was an agreement in principle to end the bitter dispute, and that "good progress" had been made in talks before they had to be abandoned amid scenes of chaos at the conciliation service Acas.
Scores of members of the Socialist Workers Party invaded the talks and surrounded Mr Woodley and BA's chief executive Willie Walsh, who hurriedly left the building via a rear exit on Saturday evening. Mr Woodley said the incident had been "catastrophic" for the talks, which ended abruptly. Shortly after the invasion, BA attacked Unite's joint leader Derek Simpson for giving a "running commentary" on the Twitter website.
Thousands of Unite members are set to walk out for five days from Monday, followed by two further five-day strikes in the coming weeks.
Mr Woodley said: "We have seen diversions this morning with people talking about Twitter and a variety of other things. This is an unfortunate diversion from the main and important issues that stand before us - making sure that this dispute is settled.
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"Yesterday we made some good progress with regards to discipline of our members, with the introduction of Acas into the disciplinary process that is right in the direction. We have already made it clear that we have got an agreement on the business issues in principle.
"In a sign of good faith I am making this offer - Willie, turn around and reinstate our people's travel without the unnecessary vindictive removal of their service and this union will call off tonight's strike and suspend the action to allow us to conclude the other issues that we were making good progress on yesterday before we were so rudely interrupted. Reinstate the travel now and those strikes scheduled tonight will be suspended to allow us to continue to conduct our business in a decent and proper way."
Union sources said the talks at Acas on Saturday had reached a "crucial" point when they were suddenly brought to a chaotic halt. Mr Walsh said BA was prepared for the strike because of its contingency plans and its schedule which was drawn up last week. He told BBC 1's Andrew Marr show: "British Airways will be flying tomorrow. We will not be grounded by the actions of a tiny minority who are clearly out of touch with reality."
A BA spokesman said: "We are disappointed that Tony Woodley has taken to negotiation through the media rather than through Acas. We had agreed to a request from Acas to meet this afternoon and are surprised that Unite did not take advantage of this. We have already offered to reinstate travel concessions to cabin crew once all elements of our offer have been implemented.
"Of more concern to us is Tony Woodley's comment to the media that he wants to revisit certain proposals in our offer, when previously he had indicated that these were agreed. This position reinforces our view that Bassa, at the centre of this dispute, is not serious in trying to come to a negotiated agreement with British Airways - and that Tony cannot control Bassa. We call on him to call off the strike action and return to the table with Acas to finish the discussions that started yesterday."
