Nearly 1,000 workers at Gatwick Airport, including baggage handlers and check-in staff, will stage eight days of strikes from later this month.
Unified, the union announced that the staff would strike in a wage dispute at the start of the school summer holidays.
The union said disruption, delays and major cancellations were “inevitable”.
The workers will initially strike for four days, starting on Friday, July 28 and ending on Tuesday, August 1.
Four more days of strikes are scheduled from Friday 4 August to Tuesday 8 August.
Hundreds of thousands of flights across Europe this summer are already at risk after air traffic controllers voted to take strike action.
Up to 12,600 flights a day – about a third of those made across the continent during the peak summer holiday period – could be delayed or canceled as a result of the strike.
Workers at Eurocontrol, which manages European airspace, said they would pull out over a dispute over wages, working hours and staffing issues.
“In the event of an all-out strike, at least 20 to 30% of flights would be delayed,” an industry source told The Times.
Low-cost airline easyJet announced earlier this month that it had to cancel 1,700 flights during the peak summer holiday season in response to the impact of air traffic control strikes in Europe and the spillover effects of airspace closures due to the Russia and Ukraine war.
The airline said it would mostly standardize some services to and from Gatwick airport, its busiest operation, between July and September in a bid to eliminate the risk of disruption to its customers’ holiday plans.
It said Gatwick flights were the hardest hit in France.
Ryanair, which blamed air traffic controllers for disrupting 1.1 million passengers, had previously called on the European Commission to intervene to protect services.
A Eurocontrol spokesperson said earlier this month that a trade union had “announced a six-month period during which an industrial strike can take place” at the network manager’s operations centre.
No specific dates for the strike have been announced; they said this was advance warning.
The spokesperson added that the company is “actively engaging with all social partners” and is “committed to finding solutions through social dialogue”.
Last month, security staff at Heathrow called off all strikes and voted in favor of a wage deal.
The Unite guild members were scheduled to come out across nearly every weekend from mid-June through the end of August.
The wage deal included a 10% wage increase retroactive to 1 January, effective from the workers’ July payment receipt; another wage increase of 1.5% from October; And a guaranteed inflation-linked wage increase for 2024.
Unite said the agreement equates to an increase of between 15.5% and 17.5%, depending on the employees’ salary ranges.
The deal also promised better maternity and paternity pay, an end to switching staff between terminals without notice, and an end to placing agency staff in security roles, once Heathrow could make the changes.
Meanwhile, at Birmingham Airport, around 100 security officers and station technicians will go on strike from July 18.
Unite said the strikes would severely affect airport security and terminal maintenance, leading to flight delays.
