British Airways has axed a further swathe of services scheduled for July as the airline and the wider industry grapple with labour shortages. Data shows that the airline has this week cancelled 517 one-way flights, equating to 76,147 seats. This represents 2.7% of its flights and 2% of its seats for the month. It will now operate 18,435 flights in July, down from expectations of 18,952 last week. This comes on top of the cancellations of 1,254 one-way flights from its July schedule, or some 214,000 seats, last week. That amounted to a 6.2% reduction in its total flights for the month, and a 5.3% drop in seats. The airline also cut 16,000 services from its summer schedule earlier in the year. BA, like much of the industry, has grappled with labour shortages and bottlenecks at airports which have hampered its ability to operate services. The UK government has ordered airlines to reappraise their schedules to cancel ahead of time those flights they will struggle to operate. Meanwhile a slot amnesty has enabled carriers to drop some services without the risk of losing their take-off and landing positions. "We took pre-emptive action earlier this year to reduce our summer schedule to provide customers with as much notice as possible about any changes to their travel plans," says BA. "As the entire aviation industry continues to face into the most challenging period in its history, regrettably it has become necessary to make some further reductions. We're in touch with customers to apologise and offer to rebook them or issue a full refund."

Pilots at SAS will go on strike this week after extended talks with management failed to produce an agreement. The Scandinavian airline group estimates that it will have to cancel half of its flights as a result of the industrial action, which it warns will have "devastating" consequences and put its future at stake. More than 1,000 SAS pilots threatened strike action in June following a failure to agree a new collective labour agreement to replace a contract that expired at the end of March. Pilot representatives want to see crewmembers laid off amid the pandemic reinstated, and have expressed concerns that the group is seeking to hire pilots on reduced salaries through its new SAS Connect and SAS Link units. Negotiations were recently extended by three days to 2 July, but the two sides were unable to reach an agreement and SAS announced on 4 July that members of its pilot unions had been called out on strike. "A strike at this point is devastating for SAS and puts the company's future, together with the jobs of thousands of colleagues, at stake," warns SAS chief executive Anko van der Werff. "The decision to go on strike now demonstrates reckless behaviour from the pilots' unions and a shockingly low understanding of the critical situation that SAS is in." The group estimates that the strike will result in the cancellation of 50% of its flights, affecting about 30,000 passengers a day. Flights operated by SAS Link, SAS Connect and the group's external providers will not be affected. SAS says it wishes to continue mediation in the hope that an agreement can be reached to "end the strike as soon as possible".

The UK has reduced the amount of time required for staff to receive security clearance for aviation work to 10 days for anti-terrorist checks and five days for accreditation, as the industry races to fill vacancies this summer. This is down from an average of around 20 days for counter terrorism checks in March. Airlines had complained that delays in processing security checks were a roadblock to staffing up amid the recovery. Earlier this year employers were granted permission to begin training new staff on certain modules while their background checks were ongoing, further speeding up the onboarding process. "People have made huge sacrifices during the pandemic and deserve their flights to run on time, without complications, and without being cancelled last minute," states transport secretary Grant Shapps. "While this is a challenging time for the sector, it is not acceptable for the current disruption to continue as we head into the summer peak. The public deserves to know now whether or not their flight will run over the summer, and so I reiterate my call for the industry to commit to deliver the flights they have scheduled, or to cancel them well in advance so people can make other arrangements." To encourage smoother operations this summer, the government has ordered airlines to review their summer schedules to ensure they are deliverable and introduced an amnesty on use-it-or-lose-it airport slot rules.