Gatwick strikes

[LittleCactus]

Ahhhh! Strikes announced for the weekend we go away (6th August)
Never experienced this before.
How have people been affected in the past? What's the likelihood of our flights being cancelled/massively delayed or issues with our luggage etc etc?

Lady in the phone said they mainly affect shirt haul flights. We're flying to Orlando so long haul. Is this true?
Stressed! We've had this planned for 3 years.

Luckily DD has just done our GCSE's so we have just come back from our holiday.

Apologies if it changed ages ago, but kids age 10+ can now use the ePassport gates. There were loads of them in the Gatwick South terminal.

If you can travel without checked luggage (and small children) it might not be too horrendous.

Will have a 9 month old baby and 6 bags of checked luggage (travelling with parents and sister). Fully expecting it to be horrendous 😂

We don't fly until 23rd August. Hoping it is all sorted by then.

Last year we were going on a ferry from Dover at just after the start of the school holidays. The amount of stress that built up from worrying about all the reports of day long queues was vastly disproportionate to the reality of no queue at all and taking about an hour to get on board from arrival.

I've had two really bad experiences at Gatwick - one was when they just introduced the no liquids in hand luggage rule, and we just stood in one queue or another for three hours (with young DDs) from arriving at the airport to getting on the plane.

The other time was about 12 years ago and passport control took about an hour and it was just a whole room full of people, no organised queues at all. DD2 was 18 months old, slipped my hand (had already been carrying her between us for the mile walk from the aircraft) and disappeared. A security guard was on the ball and quickly brought her back - horrible though.

The other 90 odd % of the time it has been pretty stress free- let's hope that continues!

Even the "passport" queue for families didn't look shocking on Saturday (presumably because most of the plane were able to go through the e-booths).

Admittedly we were on an overnight flight, but we were through customs with our 3 checked suitcases within 15 minutes of touching down on Saturday.

[Having been delayed for over an hour trying to leave Gatwick I hadn't had high hopes].

Good luck to you all, anyway

Well fuck. I'm flying with both DCs on each strike weekend. My first holiday alone with them since my divorce. They need a break and so do I! Airport bastards 😡

We’ll only have hand luggage and dd is 15, so fingers crossed ! However as it’s easyJet I’m expecting a cancellation since they seem quite trigger happy on the cancellation red button at the moment.

Most of the workers earn under £12 per hour, Unite said, "despite undertaking highly demanding and safety critical roles".

I had no idea they were on close to minimum wage!

Gatwick Airport to be hit by strikes over summer holidays - BBC News

Quite. I earn more than that as an admin person.

as much as I’m stressing about our holiday, I fully support workers receiving a fair wage

Yes, they should get more than that.

Ah ok I didn't realise they were paid so little, that is crap.
Still going to be pissed off if my flight is cancelled tho!

Easy jet has already cancelled and rebooked my flight. Are they likely to cancel it again as this happened before Friday?

The easyJet strikes have been cancelled while a new settlement is put to workers - Simon Calder predicts the others will do the same . Phew for those of us affected by the current dates !!

news.sky.com/story/amp/gatwick-summer-holiday-strike-breakthrough-as-pay-offer-goes-to-ballot-12922998

This is promising !

I’m flying BA so waiting for news with GGS

Me too. I've not seen any news anywhere to suggest that they're close to a deal? I'm absolutely freaking out now. Although I saw somewhere that possibly Gatwick could bring in staff from other airports but no idea if that's true?

Still nothing. Is everyone else just waiting to see or proactively changing plans?

Patiently waiting and keeping everything crossed 🤞🏻

I thought I read somewhere on tge Internet news that the strikes at Gatwick had been called off?!?

Only for DHL (Easyjet)

Gaah, new strikes announced at Gatwick the day I am going. I've got a 10pm flight with Wizz Air :(

It's only "Red Handling used by Norse Atlantic, Norwegian, Delta, TAP Air Portugal and Saudi". As far as it's been reported, strikes for other ground handling have been called off.