Originally Posted by
Seosan
Potentially another naïve question from me but a few Nigels in here have provided some great answers so far so here goes:
I’m reading a lot about the toxic management/culture within BA. Now, I can only go on my own experience at my current outfit, but aside from being disappointed in the decision-making at executive level on some things as a whole, I think I’ve probably had one firm interaction with pilot management in the last four years. Part of the beauty of flying is shutting the aircraft door behind you and switching off, and as long as the folks you’re flying with are good sorts you have a nice day out. Is BA management/ops run differently? Are you constantly in contact with your line managers/senior mgmt to a point where their ethos on how to run an airline gets in the way?
my experience at BA is similar to yours. I've not had a single interaction with management that was actually management related. Day-to-day you are left alone to get the job done. So long as you aren't constantly cocking everything up you won't hear from anyone.
The daily frustrations are more related to the way the different departments are seemingly under resourced making it impossible to deliver the service that we would like to give the passengers. Despite our best efforts, it's far too often that something out of our control thwarts the plan and we are apologising again.
As a really common example, we will arrive on time only to have our stand occupied for half an hour, then another 10 minute wait to get the stand guidance switched on. So frustrating to be burning huge amounts of fuel and watching dozens of passengers miss their connections because of some invisible upstream problems that we don't really understand. Oh and then there will be too few wheelchairs and no one around to get more, leaving us waiting with the pax on board, again apologising.