Re: Willie Walsh's CC plans
There may have been box payments for flight crew but not in the last ten years. There were never CAT payments. The pay restructuring you allude to was funded by putting meal allowances into an hourly rate and resulted in adjustments (up and down) in gross but not pensionable pay.
The average 747 Captain earns the benchmark pay for a 747 Captain in KLM, Lufthansa and Air France but flies between 15 and 25% more hours p.a. compared to them.
I don't know how many days off per month a short haul pilot gets but I bet he flies a lot more hours per month and sectors (ie doing work) than the average short haul hostie.
You can't really compare BA to VS then say "apart from all the eastbound work they only go south or west". Virgins flying is as equally weighted to going west as hours, pus we fly to many middle east destinations which are 'easy' in jet lag terms. We also do much more of Africa than them. I can only speak for my personal experience but I regularly go east then west or vice versa with less than the 3 local nights you get for rest and it's really no bother.
BTW, you forget to mention the B2B payment for doing all those east coasters. Destination payments too.