Any career in aviation requires an enormous amount of committed hard work, emotional investment, and considerable personal sacrifice. For those who join BA it is most likely because at the time of applying, a career with Nigel was seen as a personal pinnacle of achievement.
To have that dream destroyed in front of your eyes by cynical and inured Harvard Hardmen, who value your hard won qualifications no more than an HGV, is stingingly painful. They see our demise as some kind of great victory and get some kind of perverted gratification to see us on the back foot finally.
I face the possibility that my job will simply cease to exist and will presumably face summary dismissal because ‘September 11’ has somehow given them an opportunity to tear up all our agreements, and drive a coach and horses through past protocols. All against a background in which industrial action would be politically impossible.
I could believe they engineered the whole tragic episode themselves. There’s no sorrow, only gloating in the corporate palaces of Big Airways. ‘A unique opportunity’ is how our people have referred this to.
The Future Size and Shape Committee is likely to require 300 pilot redundancies I have heard from one senior source, and judging by the way they are currently emptying out one fleet of BA, they do not intend to operate LIFO. Why should they? Cheaper just to sack the pilots left on that fleet at the bitter end, why spend any money on retraining then for other aircraft, we don’t give a toss about them, do we? I imagine the other recommendation of the committee will be a desperate requirement for another 8000 managers.
I have never felt so undervalued, isolated, and betrayed by anything in my life. I feel physically sick. Everyday, I see greying Captains retiring after a rewarding and lucrative career saying 'Glad I'm going now!'. I remember on my joining day when one of the many people to address us said ‘Remember how you feel today, remember your sense of achievement, because you won’t always feel like this.’ How prescient he was.
That’s why Nigel is pi$$ed off.
