Tube strikes add to nation's airport misery

Commuters and travelers looking to leave the United Kingdom faced misery on Monday as London's transport network was brought grinding to a halt by industrial action taken by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, or RMT, working on the London Underground system, known as the tube, over the issue of jobs and pensions.

Although some services were running, tube bosses advised against trying to use the network from the start of service on Monday until 8am on Tuesday.

According to the RMT, post-pandemic funding changes will see 600 jobs lost, working agreements thrown out, and pension plans put at risk.

"We are demanding a direct face-to-face meeting with (London) Mayor Sadiq Khan to sort this mess out," said RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch. "There's no point in our union continuing to sit opposite management representatives who have neither the inclination nor the authority to negotiate a settlement, when the power lies with the mayor."

RMT members have also voted in favor of strike action on the nation's railways in another funding dispute, although details and dates have yet to be announced.

News of the tube disruption will not only have frustrated people returning to work after the long jubilee holiday weekend, but also added another layer of stress for people looking to use the tube as the first step of their journey to fly out of the country, following a week of major disruption to air travel, including numerous short-notice flight cancellations, as the aviation sector has struggled to deal with renewed public demand for air travel following the lifting of pandemic restrictions.

Many airlines laid off employees during the pandemic downturn in business and now the public appetite for travel has returned, they have had difficulty in keeping up, because for security reasons, airline-worker hiring is a complex process.

Sky News reported that as many as 200 flights were cancelled over the weekend, many with budget carrier EasyJet, but British Airlines and Wizz Air were also both affected, with many people unable to get away, or unable to return.

"We are very sorry and fully understand the disruption this will have caused for our customers," said a statement from EasyJet. "We are focused on getting them to their destination as soon as possible."

Khan said Brexit restrictions on overseas workers had made the problem much worse, but Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC that it was an issue for the transport industry, not politicians, to resolve, and accused them of having "seriously oversold flights and holidays relative to their capacity to deliver "despite government warnings.

"The government doesn't run airports, it doesn't run the airlines. The industry needs to do that," he said. "We'll work with the industry very hard ... to make sure we don't see a repeat of those scenes."

The situation was little better on the Eurostar train service linking the UK with mainland Europe, after services to Paris were badly affected by power supply issues outside the French capital.