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For the first time in the airline’s history, British Airways pilots are beginning a two-day strike over pay.

Hundreds of flights have been canceled, disrupting the plans of thousands of travelers. The British Airlines Pilots’ Association says BA should share more of its profits, but BA say its pay offer is fair.

Simon Calder, travel editor of The Independent, says “it’s a very, very bad-tempered dispute”.

While there have been past pilot strikes with airlines like Air France, in general, the relations between the pilots at British Airways and the airline have been relatively good. There have been no strikes for the last 40 years.

“The pilots say British Airways really needs to give them a bigger slice of the around two billion euro of profits that the airline makes each year. British Airways says, ‘No, we’re offering you a pay rise above inflation. You’re already some of the best-paid pilots in Europe, we’re not going to give you any more cash,'” said Calder.

However, the impact obviously has a much bigger effect than just with the pilots and airline executives. Almost every flight has been grounded at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 – the main base for BA. Over the next two days, 200,000 passengers will be affected and 1,700 flights canceled, and people will, obviously, be upset.

BA is set to lose around 100 million euro from the two-day action. However, the pilots say they’re not being taken seriously by management.

Some passengers were not even informed of their flight’s cancellation and have still shown up at Heathrow. The only flights on BA that are available are international. According to Calder, “you’re out of luck” otherwise.

The reputation damage is unquantifiable, especially because the pilots came out last night and said they got a mandate for further strike action until January. This could imply that there will be flights over the Christmas and New Year period, which is typically very lucrative for BA.

According to Calder, there’s an underlying reason why BA does not want to settle with these pilots.

“BA doesn’t want to settle with the pilots partly because it feels that the pay is perfectly fair, but also more practically, they have already settled with nine out of 10 employees employed as ground staff, cabin crew, engineers, and so on. They have agreed the 11.5 percent over three years – better than inflation here in the UK – and of course if they give an inch to the pilots, the other unions are going to straight ’round saying, ‘Thank you very much. We’d like to start negotiating please,'” said Calder.

Calder says it’s ultimately a difficult situation for everyone, especially the 200,000 passengers caught in the middle of the drama.