PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - BA Direct Entry Pilot.
View Single Post
Old 3rd Mar 2019, 10:32
  #5985 (permalink)  
GS-Alpha
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 743
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
As many have been saying for quite some time now, BA is nothing like the airline it was even just a few years ago. Things which would have been unthinkable years ago are absolutely on the table now. The rot has accelerated massively and the unions are pretty much impotent to do anything about it. It’s like a snowball rolling down hill; if you don’t stop it early on it will have gathered so much mass and velocity that it becomes unstoppable. I personally think the point where unions could stop it passed many years ago. The only thing to stop it now will be market forces - people refusing to join or large numbers of people leaving. In fact the mixed fleet cabin crew model requires a fairly high turn over as they don’t want people staying for ages and demanding extra pay for their loyalty. That same unacceptable attrition rate will exist for pilots too, although they’d want them to stay longer, but I bet we are nowhere near it at the moment, therefore IAG will think it’s still acceptable to keep turning the thumb screws. As long as they just take as much as can be stomached at a time, chip chip chip, marginal gains and all that. Change happens faster than it used to; the second a chip is taken, the chisel is already cracking the next bit. Our employer no longer cares about anything but improving efficiencies and therefore operating margins. And we no longer just compare ourselves to others; we chase that improved operating margin no matter how high it already is. If employee attrition versus recruitment starts to effect that operating margin, things will change, otherwise expect more of the same.
GS-Alpha is offline