Timeline - British Airways' battle with Unite

(Reuters) - A strike by British Airways (BA) cabin crew entered its third day on Monday, with more walkouts threatened for next month.

Here is a timeline of events in the battle between BA and the Unite union, which represents BA staff:

October 5, 2009 - BA announces plan to cut 1,700 staff in Britain and implement a two-year freeze in basic pay for cabin crew.

October 7 - Unite says BA must abandon plans to cut jobs and resume talks or face possible strike action by cabin crew in the run-up to Christmas.

October 30 - Unite launches a legal challenge against BA's plan to change working patterns for 14,000 cabin crew, which fails.

December 14 - BA cabin crew call a 12-day strike planned over Christmas, hours after the airline revealed a 3.7 billion pound hole in its pension fund.

December 15 - BA takes legal action to halt the 12-day strike by cabin crew and two days later wins a court ruling stopping the Christmas strike action.

January 20, 2010 - Unite says it will re-ballot staff but BA cabin crew say they will not strike over the Easter holiday period because of the public backlash over the planned Christmas strike.

January 25 - Unite opens a new strike ballot after two weeks of talks with BA fail to secure a deal.

February 19 - Unite loses a High Court bid to overturn changes to cabin crews' working arrangements.

February 22 - More than 80 percent of the 9,000 BA cabin crew balloted by Unite back industrial action.

March 4 - BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh says 6,000 staff have volunteered to step in and keep the airline operating in the event of a strike.

March 12 - Unite says its members will strike for three days from March 20 and for four days from March 27, while BA remove a formal offer made to staff the day before and conditional on Unite not naming any strike dates.

March 15 - Prime Minister Gordon Brown says a strike by BA cabin crew is "unjustified and deplorable" and should be called off.

March 19 - Unite announces that talks with management have collapsed and the strike is to go ahead from midnight.

(Writing by Rhys Jones and David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; Additional writing by Carl Bagh)