Originally Posted by
SpringHeeledJack
......not forgetting all their A346's in storage whilst the A343's were worked here there and everywhere. The Teutonic psychology is pretty impressive in such matters and it seems to be paying off in spades. Whilst it was difficult to predict when things would normalise and how much real demand would exist, you'd have expected a more nuanced response from BA and IAG,
Unfortunately the IAG group is a separate entity and is just in the business of making as much profit as possible from all the airlines in the group. All decisions regarding expenditure above a very low amount [something in the region of £1000] have to be okayed by IAG finance and I suspect they didn't like the cost of keeping the Boeing 747s on the ground. BA had a check regime drawn up by Boeing, so the aircraft could be put back in service within a day but the trade off for that was a fair amount of work on the aircraft and systems and regular engine runs etc. all of which cost money especially when they were hardly flying them at all. BA also offloaded approx one third of it's engineers at the same time as the withdrew all the B747s as the engineers 'weren't needed' and put all the remaining ones on 'new' less favourable contracts. They are still struggling to try and recruit engineers now to get back up to full strength, as in a tight labour market BA are nowhere near the top of the league in the UK as regards salary...Showing how desperate they are to recruit one of the 'benefits' listed by BA engineering in a recent job advert was free parking at work
