Bealine, it was in support of you that I mentioned the demoralisation of staff! Yes, we can all quote companies where some of the staff are providing service that the company can no longer actually give. In deed may not want to give.
I agree with the views that forthcoming edicts from Ed. will also be picking at the symptoms and not the root cause. In this, he is no differrent to 99% of other CEOs. I would wager that he knows all about the root cause but is unwilling to tackle it. The reason for that, I think, is that no CEO has the ability to dismantle an empire. Every person that is a CEO/MD has the mindset to Build Build Build. When the end time arrives, they cannot, literally, cannot see how to fix things by going back to the small side. So they pick away at the edges and, eventually, are left with a company that is neither fish nor fowl.
At this point, the stock market may lose faith or they get bought up and, in the old days, governments bailed them out. Also, the CEO gets booted out by the board. The new CEO pledges that they will rebuild the company and other such stuff. This will almost certainly fail because the board have hired yet another CEO that can only Build, rather than Reassemble. Another old company that has seen it's best days and is in a simlar position is Marks & Spencer. I cannot guess how close their final landing is but certainly within five years. The problem for M&S is that there are dozens of other supermarkets and clothing stores taking their share. For BA, the problem is less severe in that the (local) long haul competion is only VS but there are, of course, dozens of other long haul 'legacy' airlines all hoping to last long enough to be able to buy up the routes of those that have failed. It is a game made more complex by international regulation and national pride.
It is my contention that, if a CEO had the vision to reduce the company by a significant amount and, yes, lots of people lose jobs and so on, then it is possible for a new era. But, 99% of companies will follow the same 'arc' from inception, through expansion to domination and then collapse. Think of how a star finishes it's life by becoming a White Giant and then a Red Dwarf? Life moves in cycles and the truly painful part of life today, is that the cycles move very much faster than before and, thanks to electronics, we can see it happening more clearly.
Sorry about another lengthy entry but it is a fascinating subject and, having been involved in commerce and government for 27 years, it is interesting to watch humans repeating the mistakes of other humans. I, of course, continue to repeat the mistakes of other humans too!