Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, on Thursday the 4th of May.

Well, I've spent the morning, or a good slice of it, at Heathrow. Terminal 5, to be precise, just to see what was going on. And the reason is,

of course, that today we have seen the first of the second wave of strikes by security staff.

Let me just remind you who's doing what and why. The security staff who search passengers who

actually control airside access for things like catering at Heathrow Terminal 5 are on strike.

Again, they actually walked out on the 31st of March for 10 days, taking them up to the Easter Sunday,

and they are now going on strike again.

They're in pursuit of a pay claim.

And it is only Terminal 5 that is directly affected by this.

And furthermore, it's only probably departing flights that are affected.

There's big signs in the terminal warning departing passengers. There may be some security

delays due to industrial action and it's quite a scene there because they've got lots of

waiting areas marked out.

People can queue up.

But actually, in the time I spent there, there was no sign of those ever being used.

The fast track security lanes are closed at the moment, which will cheese off people, I guess,

who are gold status with British Airways.

But everything seemed to be moving fairly quickly. And British Airways, but everything seemed to be moving fairly quickly.

And British Airways, the only airline at Terminal 5, has emailed passengers overnight

saying, don't turn up at Heathrow too early.

That's two hours before a European flight, three hours ahead of long haul departures. And the other aspect of what BA is saying is,

oh, and if you want to, you can check in hand baggage free of charge to reduce the pressure on the

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