British Airways wants to restart talks with unions to head off the prospect of strike action in 2010, likely to hit bookings, after winning a court ruling to prevent a Christmas walkout.
"We are open to holding more talks with Unite but cannot pre-empt any decisions they make on re-balloting," a BA spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.
The Unite union said it would re-ballot its members after BA won a court ruling on Thursday to prevent a cabin crew strike that threatened to strand around a million passengers over Christmas.
However, a strike is unlikely to be held until January 2010 at the earliest given the logistical difficulty and the time it will take to organise a postal vote of workers all over the world.
"The ongoing threat of a strike could further damage bookings in the new year. However we think that the duration of the strike might be scaled back from 12 days which, by the union's own admission, was excessive," said Deutsche Bank analyst Geoff Van Klaveren.
"We estimate that BA stood to lose 310 million pounds ($502.4 million) in revenues and 163 million pounds in profits from a 12-day strike. The financial damage will now be much less but still material, in our view."
Shares in BA, which have fallen a fifth in the last three months, were 0.3 percent down at 191.60 pence by 1225 GMT, valuing the airline at around 2.2 billion pounds.
The global recession has battered the airline industry as consumers cut back on trips abroad and lucrative business class passengers fly less, hitting BA's market value.
BA is expected to report an average pretax loss of 601.20 million pounds for the year to the end of March, according to a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S poll of 19 analysts.
The High Court in London upheld BA's complaint that Unite had breached industrial relations law by balloting around 1,000 staff who had left the company or were in the process of leaving.
BA cabin crew had said they would walk out from Dec. 22, escalating a dispute over job losses and changes to working practices. About 13,000 BA staff were balloted by the Unite union, 92.5 percent of whom backed the strike.
Disruption is still possible over the Christmas period if cabin crew decide to call in sick in protest but BA will likely prioritise the most profitable routes to minimise the financial impact.
A Unite spokeswoman said that the union had nothing to say for the moment.
Judge Laura Cox refused Unite permission to appeal, although the union can apply directly to the Court of Appeal, but lawyers expect Unite to re-ballot as soon as possible.
"The union must give BA a week's notice before sending out new ballot papers, which would probably run for three weeks since it's the holidays, so the most realistic time for any strike would be the end of January or the start of February," said Marc Meryon, an industrial relations lawyer at law firm Bircham Dyson Bell.
"What the union needs to work out is how long they will strike for because I think the 12-day strike notice perplexed crew who were expecting one, two or three days of strikes. Unite needs to get back in step with its members before they re-ballot," added Meryon. - Reuters