Shuttleworth, I have every sympathy.
As a passenger who has been flying on BA (and not cheap tickets!) on two of the last three occasions where its shorthaul schedule imploded in spectacular style (snow in London at the end of January and the Swanwick ATC failure), I remain amazed that BA's operation is run this way. I luckily managed to avoid being on a BA flight on the day of the recent storms hitting Heathrow.
It is high time for Mike Street to step down - the man and his team appear to have no capability to manage their operation to deliver the service that they promise to their customers.
What really defeats me is this:
On my flight to Lyon at the end of January, we were waiting for an aircraft to arrive from Brussels; flight crew from Manchester; three cabin crew from Helsinki and two more cabin crew from Lisbon to join up together to operate the flight to Lyon. Due to delays in other flights arriving, we eventually left three hours late.
BA's computerised resource planning systems tell them that this is the most efficient way to work. However, if anything hiccups (e.g. weather, ATC etc) then the standby resources built into the system are rapidly eroded and the disruption then snowballs out of hand. The result is that the entire shorthaul schedule drops to bits for at least two days after any major events, with a massive loss of revenue, higher costs and irritated passengers. The costs of this must far outweight the alleged savings on crew numbers over the year. Add to this the bad publicity that BA invariably attracts - "X flights cancelled by BA due to hedgehog loose on runway at Heathrow" - and you could actually have a half-decent operation.
Simple message - keep the aircraft and crew together throughout the entire working day. Avoid all of the crew transport costs; extra crew waiting allowances, meal breaks and all of the other rubbish that has built up over the years. Keep the crew with the aircraft until the working day has been completed, and they'll have every incentive to reduce delays to get home sooner. It's good for the customer and means that BA's schedules will recover faster from disruption caused by external factors over which BA has no control.
Even American Airlines have learnt this lesson and are starting to keep the aircraft and crews together for the working day. So, from one of your regular customers - please, oh please, throw the computer resource planners in the bin and just run the operation along simple lines. I can't bear the thought of another six hour delay at Lyon airport for my return flight.