Tess De Mello spent three decades working as a cabin crew member for British Airways, viewing the position as central to her professional identity and taking considerable pride in her performance. During the pandemic, BA issued redundancy notices to nearly its entire workforce of 42,000 staff members, with approximately 10,000 ultimately losing their positions. The airline offered remaining long-serving crew members the option to continue employment at substantially reduced compensation, with basic pay cuts of 20% proposed, though actual reductions varied between 15% and 35% according to union data.
When De Mello sought clarification regarding her specific salary upon potential rehire and requested time to consider the offer while explicitly expressing her desire to remain with the company, BA reportedly informed her she would be treated as having voluntarily resigned. She subsequently filed an unfair dismissal claim against the airline. An employment tribunal judge ruled against De Mello and a former colleague in the preceding year, though both parties are pursuing an appeal of that decision.
Beyond the dismissal dispute, De Mello and her co-claimant are also contesting their holiday pay calculations from their time as part-time workers. Their legal representatives argue that the scheduling structure inherent to cabin crew positions—working extended blocks of consecutive days followed by extended periods off—classified them as part-year workers entitled to full-time holiday entitlements, similar to educators. This classification would diverge from standard part-time calculations and potentially align with a 2022 Supreme Court ruling on part-year worker protections.
Should the claimants succeed, the implications could extend significantly throughout the aviation industry. The Unite union indicated that comparable shift patterns are customary across the sector, meaning a favorable ruling could expose airlines to comparable claims from numerous other cabin crew members. BA stated that a tribunal had previously dismissed related claims in 2025, finding the airline’s pandemic-related actions to be non-discriminatory and fair, and characterized the current claims as without merit.
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