The overly played out dispute between British Airways and the cabin crew union Unite is now set to make its return to the High Court in London. The Unite union said that it is seeking a permanent injunction, which would prevent the airline from imposing cost cutting proposals that came into effect just before Christmas. These new changes affect the crew members that are used on long haul flights from Heathrow.

British Airways believes that it is well within its rights to reduce the number of crew members that it has on board its flights. However, the union claims that any changes to this would be a breach of the employee contracts, which were previously agreed on between the company and the employees.

It was also reported that John Hendry QC would present 10 test cases, which are representative of 5,400 claimants who are among the 13,400 crew employed by British Airways. The QC said that this is not an action which is intended to seek some sort of collective enforcement of the relevant terms, These are individual employees, each of whom seeks the enforcement of his or her individual terms. The relevant terms are the number of crew members he or she has to work with on any given flight.

This new case is expected to last up to five days in court. Unite is also re-balloting its 12,000 cabin crew members at British Airways for industrial action over the row, with the results due on February 22^nd. Meanwhile, this Friday British Airways is expected to report heavy losses for the fourth financial quarter of 2009.