Perhaps cwatters a couple of pages back has a good business idea? Although 24x7 nurseries are definitely not the norm (if indeed any exist) creating one close to LHR could be a lucrative idea. With the volume of shift workers there must be a market for kids to nightstop there from time to time. The employers could subsidise it a bit, as the fees would need to be higher than normal as staff would need paying more to do night shifts, but using this case as an example it would save them money as the 75% roster would no longer be a problem. Perhaps I should go and see my bank manager!
Mr Angry - the supply of live-in nannys in Purley may well not be a problem, but you will find that as soon as you get away from big cities to places such as Dorset (to pick a place not entirely at random) that changes. When our son was born 5 years ago, our original plan was that I would work at home, but we would employ a nanny during the day to entertain him whilst I worked. However as the date for my wife returning to work got ever closer it became obvious that despite our best efforts there was no one available where we lived then (a smallish town in Cheshire). I don't know if you have children, but most parents don't just put a card in a newsagents window and take the first person to knock on the door, especially in this day and age. They want at least some degree of comfort that the hard choice they are making to put their kid into someone elses care for significant periods of time is going to be made a little easier by having some trust that the person selected will do a good job.
Ultimately this argument is always going to have 2 diametrically opposed sides - either women with kids have every right to work, but need help to achieve it; or women with kids should stay at home to look after them, and probably a majority of posters here are not going to change their views on that. However perhaps it isn't that simple - given the number of working mothers these days, and with ever increasing numbers of them in senior roles, not just on the Tesco checkouts, if they all left to go back to do full time child care then the country's economy would collapse.
I suppose ultimately that could help with the argument here, as several airlines would also collapse as the number of people travelling shrank substantially, which would return these women pilots home, trouble is the men would be out of work too!
Once the employment tribunal is complete, a transcript would be a fascinating read, because as other posters have said there has to be more to this story than is in the public domain, otherwise I can't see it would have got this far.
A final thought - if this case makes airlines reluctant to employ women pilots, that will shrink the pool of available bodies available in the job market (which based on this board seems to be improving at present). Shrinkage of pool equals increased cost of employment as either more money has to be spent in attracting potential employees (greater salary, more perks, less bonds for example) and current employees feel less vulnerable, and so more able to press for higher wage increases. Given the proportion of male to female pilots at most airlines I know which sounds more expensive in the long run, and it ain't the women!