Basil you seem to be on a mission to moan about how badly paid maintenance engineers are. Just about every post of yours contains a hard luck story. Well I say low pay for the engineers weeds out the less enthusiastic ones. Really keen people will endure a few years of low salary (say 20) and be rewarded with a career that many may be envious of (the glamour, the foreign postings, the aeroplanes)! If the engineers are that disgruntled perhaps they could employ Chris Darke to negotiate a whopping pay rise for them. But on past performance I wouldn't recommend it.
Sirwa69 - that table of salaries you've published is misleading. The level of costs for flight ops is not 'disproportionate in the extreme'. The only way you'll see 7% of flight crew representing 7% of costs is if everyone in BA is paid the same. Unfortunately for BA managers, the going rate for flight crew is higher than the going rate for many backroom staff, and rightly so. Consequently the higher paid departments will represent a greater proportion of costs than they do manpower. If you don't like the Flight Ops figures, why not try to deduce the proportional cost of senior managers? Only 600 of them in 50000 staff, but at a cost starting at £60K + car each I think you'll see some interesting figures. And lets not overlook IM, who's figures seem reasonable, but only because they don't include contractors, some of whom cost sums you wouldn't believe per week! (And before you ask, yes, I have checked my facts and I know what BA are being charged for one very expensive consultancy team)
[ 17 October 2001: Message edited by: Hand Solo ]