Union wins court fight with BA

The union representing British Airways cabin crews won an appeal against a legal block on its planned strikes on Thursday - but said it wouldn't order workers off the job until Monday at the earliest.

The decision by the Court of Appeal means the Unite union can go ahead with a lengthy walkout in the coming weeks, disrupting travel during a busy holiday period, but union leaders called on BA to use the breathing space created by the court action to return to the negotiating table.

"We would hope that we don't have to strike at all," Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, told reporters outside the court in central London. "We would call upon British Airways to go that extra mile ... and allow us to proceed to what is absolutely required in this, a negotiated conclusion."

BA said it was disappointed that Unite's appeal had been upheld "and that the union intends to go ahead with its unjustified and pointless strikes". It added that it had already put forward a "very fair" offer to resolve a longrunning dispute over changes to pay and working conditions.

The airline said it was confident that a large number of its 13,000 cabin crew staff would ignore the strike call and that it aimed to fly 70 per cent of passengers booked over the targeted period.

Unite had planned to begin a wave of strikes totalling 20 days last Tuesday, but a last-minute ruling by the High Court deemed the walkouts were unlawful because of a technical error in the union's ballot of members.

BA has been running a reduced service this week, but had been unwinding some of its contingency plans for the walkout to allow more flights.

A seven-day strike by cabin crews in March led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights and cost the loss-making airline some Stg45 million ($A76.69 million).

Simpson said that workers would not strike until the planned start of the second of the original four blocks of five-day walkouts - May 18-22, May 24-28, May 30-June 3 and June 5-9.