Hello and welcome to the Independent Daily podcast with me, Simon Corder, coming to you from

Heathrow Airport. Very busy, very blustery, very noisy, but quite a lot happening. Except if you are on one of the

50 British Airways flights, which has been cancelled today.

I've come down to the airport really to kind of see what's going on.

Bear in mind that we were told there would be cancellations on British Airways tomorrow

and for the next 10 days because of the security staff strike.

More on that in just a moment.

But British Airways tells me that the impact of striking French air traffic controllers

is so severe that that's the reason they have cancelled 50-50 flights today.

That includes multiple departures to Amsterdam, Hamburg, Nice, Prague, Zurich,

along, of course, with the inbound legs from those locations.

Many of those are the kind of usual suspects and you'll be thinking,

hang on, they're not in France, well, nieces, but the rest aren't.

Well, unfortunately, the impact of having strikes in France and reducing the number of flights that can overfly French territory has an impact on the whole operation. British Airways says they are more hard

hit than any other airline and that certainly seems to be the case looking around the UK.

I've seen a couple of cancellations of Iberia flights between Heathrow and Madrid and

easy jet between Gatwick and Marseilles, but be a certainly hardest hit.

Under air passenger rights rules, of course, people are entitled to get meals if necessary,

hotel if their flight is cancelled. You won't be getting any compensation because I think

British Airways can fairly say this is not their fault.

But it is not great if you are taking 50 flights representing, well, let's say conservatively about 5,000 or 6,000 people out of the system just ahead of the Easter rush and that coincides

of course with the strikes that are taking place. Fourteen hundred members of the Unite Union.

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