Heres a question for you then. You turn up at an A321 with with only 6 crew and the matrix says you need 7, even though there's still no catering. Are you gonna go with six, or are you going to delat the floight and wait for the seventh? My moneys on the latter.
We're still working to ridiculous crewing levels, and have been for three months, even though there is no justification for them. I bet theres still 6 crew on an A319 to AMS. Thats one passenger seat blocked out and about 20 passengers per crew member to serve drinks too!
IIRC keeperboy you are a fairly new joiner to BA which is probably why you have a realistic idea about what hard work and efficiency in this industry really is. What gets my goat is people like Anti-ice trotting out the BASSA line of 'working' 60 hours per week when we all know that a huge part of that is sitting around on the ground drinking coffee on a union sponsored turnaround.