Passengers on BA face potential Christmas disruption after a 2,500-strong group of the British flag-carriers’ junior cabin crew voted to strike over “poverty pay and broken promises”. Unite, which represents the “mixed fleet” cabin crew, did not say when their members might take industrial action but the vote in favour by 79% of the crew would allow the staff to take action any day from December 21. Problems at BA could coincide with potential disruption at Virgin Atlantic. One of its pilots’ unions is balloting staff over industrial action short of a strike and has said the action would take place on December 23 and 24. The potential strife reflects widespread frustration among staff at long-established legacy airlines over the stagnation of pay and benefits. Pilots at Germany’s Lufthansahave staged a series of strikes over the past two years, while flight attendants at Air France staged a strike this summer. The mixed fleet crew, who make up 15% of BA’s flight attendants, belong to a flexible unit set up to work on a range of the airline’s aircraft operating both long-haul and short-haul flights. Traditionally, airlines have split cabin crew between long-haul and short-haul operations, with new employees starting on the shorter flights on lower pay. The cabin crew voted to strike after rejecting a proposed 2% pay rise. Unite said that jobs in the mixed fleet group — to which all new BA cabin attendants are assigned — had been advertised as earning between GBP21,000 and GBP25,000 a year. But they had in fact started at just over GBP12,000 a year, with GBP3 an hour for the time they spent flying. Matt Smith, a regional officer for Unite, said members had voted overwhelmingly for strike action because BA’s pay rates were “indefensible” and the crew were at “breaking point”. British Airways said it was “extremely disappointed” the union was creating uncertainty for its customers.<br/>
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Investigators looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are making their last sweep of the search area in the Indian Ocean, Australian authorities leading the search said on Wednesday. Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board, most of them Chinese, en route to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. Its whereabouts have become one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. The search is set to be wrapped up in January, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said. Malaysia, Australia and China agreed in July to suspend the search if the plane was not found or new evidence uncovered once the search area had been scoured. Australia is leading the search for the plane at the request of the Malaysian government. Search vessel Fugro Equator on Monday left Fremantle in Western Australia for its last journey to the 120,000-sq-km patch of sea floor that has been the focus of the 1,000-day hunt for the vanished Boeing 777, the JACC said. The vessel will revisit sites of previous sonar contact to examine them more closely with a submersible drone. Chinese involvement in the search diminished this week, as that country's sonar-equipped vessel ended its role in the hunt and turned for Shanghai.<br/>
Relatives of victims of a Malaysian Airlines flight that vanished in 2014 urged the people of Mauritius on Wednesday to be on lookout for plane debris that might wash ashore in the Indian Ocean island state and hand in anything to authorities. Flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, sparking an international search in the southern Indian Ocean that continues today. "We hope more people will find more debris which could help to determine the location of the wreckage," Hui Jiang, who lost his mother on the plane, told a news conference in the Mauritian capital Port Louis. Jiang and five others were visiting Mauritius this week as part of a regional tour by relatives of the missing passengers to help raise alertness to plane wreckage that might turn up in the area. "We don’t know how many pieces are out there and lost forever because people are not aware," said Grace Nathan, whose mother was on the doomed flight. <br/>
The US DoT Wednesday fined American Airlines a record-matching $1.6m for violating a rule that prohibits long tarmac delays. The department said it found American had allowed a number of domestic flights to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours without allowing passengers an opportunity to get off the plane. The fine matched the amount that was assessed against Southwest in 2015 for violating the same rule. American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller said the company was pleased to have resolved the issue. "It's worth noting that a large portion of the settlement is related to a winter weather event that occurred nearly four years ago in Charlotte," he said. US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement the "tarmac rule is meant to prevent passengers from being trapped in aircraft on the ground for hours on end."<br/>