CY to divert flights to Stansted as baggage handlers set to strike

SOME 2,400 Cyprus Airways passengers will be affected by the 48-hour walkout by hundreds of baggage handlers and check-in staff at London’s Heathrow airport tomorrow.
Heathrow workers employed by Swissport will stop work from 4.30am on Sunday, hitting Terminals One, Two and Three and the Cargo Terminal and affecting up to 20 airlines, including Cyprus Airways.

To deal with the problem, four return flights would be rerouted to Stansted airport instead, CY spokesman Tassos Angelis told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

“The early morning and afternoon flights on Sunday and Monday from Larnaca will fly to Stansted instead of Heathrow,” he said. The planes are expected to shuttle 1,200 passengers on those four flights.

“The four return flights from the UK to Larnaca have also affected around 1,200 passengers and instead of flying out from Heathrow, the passengers will fly to Cyprus from Stansted.”

Passengers are expected to transport themselves to and from Stansted.
“Each passenger is going a different way and so we are not arranging transportation to and from Stansted.”

Angelis said all passengers had been informed of the change and that so far there had be no cancellations due to the disruption. Nevertheless, anyone who had not been informed by the airline should contact its call centre on freephone 8000-0008, he added.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.