Travel misery from Monday

IT COULD be travel misery for airline passengers passing through Almeria and Murcias’s St Javier airports as unions go on strike from Monday.

Iberia ground staff and cabin crew have declared 15 days of strike action beginning on February 18^.

Their union is protesting over the loss making national flag carrier’s plans to cut 4,500 jobs, about a quarter of the workforce. Iberia is already committed to abandon 15 per cent of its routes this year and impose salary reductions on its beleaguered workforce.

The disruptions will take place between February 18-22, March 4-8 and March 18-22, thus avoiding the Easter holiday period, which falls at the end of March.

The operating company IAG (International Airlines Group) which also control British Airways, stated at the beginning of February that in the absence of a pact with the unions, it would go ahead with the changes announced late last year, which were intended to balance the books in terms of operating profits by the second half of 2013.

Iberia lost €262 million Euros in the first nine months of 2012.