Heathrow faces strike this week after refuellers reject pay offer – as union warns of flight delays

Heathrow is facing a strike by refuellers this week after they rejected a revised pay offer, the Unite union has said.

Unite warned that the three-day industrial action by staff at refuelling firm AFS, which starts on Thursday, would cause delays for hundreds of flights at Britain’s busiest airport.

AFS (Aviation Fuel Services) provides fuelling services to more than 70 airlines at the airport including Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines, United, SAS, Air France, Emirates, Delta, JAL, KLM and Singapore Airlines.

The company had made a revised pay offer of a 10% increase, which Unite said members rejected because it “did not meet their expectations”.

Unite said staff had not received a pay increase for three years and had seen their pay fall by 15% when accounting for inflation, which hit 9.1% in the year to May.

General secretary Sharon Graham said AFS is “wholly owned by incredibly wealthy energy companies who are entirely able to provide our members with a decent pay increase”.

“This is yet another example of energy companies boosting profits at the expense of workers,” she added.

AFS is a joint venture operation whose partners include BP, Total Energies, Q8 Aviation and Valero Energy, the union said. BP is among energy companies that have seen large increases in profits due to soaring fuel prices.

Refuellers will walk out from 5am on Thursday until 4.59am on Sunday – dates which coincide with the start of the summer holidays for most schools in England.

Airlines discussing contingency plans

Heathrow said it was “in discussions with our airline partners on what contingency plans they can implement, including using other fuel suppliers already operating at the airport”.

It has already been plagued by staffing issues, particularly in ground handling, which have contributed to delays, last-minute flight cancellations and luggage problems faced by travellers in recent weeks.

Heathrow previously told airlines to stop selling summer tickets and imposed a passenger limit of 100,000 a day – a daily cut of 4,000.

Read more: ‘Unreasonable and unacceptable’ – Furious Emirates refuses to cut flights from Heathrow

Unite regional officer Kevin Hall said: “The strike action will cause severe disruption and delays at Heathrow but this dispute is entirely of AFS’ own making.

“It initially refused to enter into negotiations and only belatedly made an offer which workers judged entirely unacceptable.

“Even at the eleventh hour, strike action could be avoided if AFS made a substantially improved offer.

“The clock is ticking.”