Ryanair is poised to become the biggest airline in the UK, overtaking British Airways. Ryanair could soon have a reasonable claim to the title of Britain’s favourite airline – with new figures showing it could overtake BA in terms of size by 2018. According to aviation analysts OAG, BA had 25m seats available on routes to and from UK airports in 2016, while Ryanair had 22m. However, the Ryanair had grown its capacity by 13% since 2015, while BA had increased its by just 4%. EasyJet had 19m. When considering load factor, Ryanair was leading the way, reporting an average monthly load of 94%. BA had just 81%, according to data from IAG. In terms of destinations, Ryanair serves 192 in 32 countries, next to BA’s 183 in 78, while BA has a fleet size of 268 next to Ryanair’s 366. <br/>
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British Airways says its full schedule will operate on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, despite a strike by cabin crew working for its “mixed fleet” unit at Heathrow. BA’s CE, Alex Cruz, called the strike an “attempt to ruin Christmas for thousands of our customers”. He said: “Over the weekend we have been working on detailed contingency plans to ensure that we are able to operate our normal flight programme from all our airports on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day." The BA staff, who joined mixed fleet from 2010 onwards are in dispute over what they call “poverty pay”. Their pay and conditions are significantly worse than longer-serving cabin crew. Their union, Unite, says that cabin crew are forced to work even when unfit to fly, in order to earn a flying allowance of GBP3 per hour. <br/>