I'm sorry, but I have to agree that some of the working practices which BA has are absolutely ridiculous.
The Larnaca thing is a good example; and no, I don't agree that it should take longer to turn a BA 767 round than a charter 767. On the latter, you have 326 pax to disembark, clean the aircraft and board 326, whereas BA has one third fewer pax. The critical path to a good turnround is pax off, cleaners on, cleaners off, pax on as you can fulfil all of the other functions in tandem. So we are saying either a) that BA pax are slower to disembark than their charter compatriots; or b) the BA cleaners are slower. Laughable either way.
Holding delays ex LHR at approx 15 minutes are often lower than the LGW delays of up to 20 minutes, so that argument doesn't apply either.
There are numerous other idiotic things in BA's agreements which just make me laugh. It's no wonder they can't make money when:
a) EOG pilots are limited to 700 flight hours per year and can only exceed 720 with the full agreement of BALPA and EOG management. I suspect the average utilisation of a Go/easyJet pilot is well on the north side of 800 hours, towards the legal maximum of 900. So BA has instantly sacrificed 23% of its potential pilot productivity - oh, and I forgot to say - sim details and office days count towards your 700 hours at a notional rate of up to four hours per office or sim detail!
b) The wonderful bidding system at LGW (Carnage to its friends) which allows you to bid for - and allocates - nightstops in places where they don't even nightstop aircraft. Nice, low cost philosophy. The principle appears to be that, if you aren't happy with your roster, you will go sick and your productivity will fall, so they give you what you want if you have sufficient seniority to get it. It also lets you choose to operate fewer sectors throughout your working week.
c) If you're replaced by a management pilot for whatever reason on a flight, you can still opt to go along and sit on the jumpseat to claim your allowances!
d) If you get taken off a few days' trip part-way through (e.g. due to late running aircraft) and don't complete the rest of the trip, you still get paid your allowances for sitting at home.
e) The great agreement that cabin crew will be paid up to £38 (£52 for a CSD) for waiting an hour and a half in the crew lounge at Heathrow between flights if they don't have time to go back to the Compass Centre.
f) The crazy agreement that city centre hotels have to be used for crew accommodation, even if you're only on a split duty nightstop. Good, cheap hotels with cheap transport costs they most certainly are not.
g) The crewing of the Middle East routes. A 777 operates Heathrow-Bahrain-Doha-Bahrain-Heathrow almost every day. Now, you would think (given the 6h30 sector to BAH and the 0h40 onwards to DOH) that one crew would take the aircraft LHR-BAH-DOH and then get off, getting back on the following day to fly DOH-BAH-LHR. Common sense. Well, BA crews fly one sector LHR-BAH & get off; operate BAH-DOH-BAH shuttle on the following day; then get a slip day in BAH and operate BAH-LHR eventually on day 5. What should be a three-day trip turns into a five-day trip due to some ridiculous rule about having to get off a long-haul aircraft if it's flown a sector of more than 5h00. A joke - and an inefficient joke at that.
The sooner someone faces facts and realises that these things are costing megabucks, the better. I'm not advocating flogging every pilot or cabin crew member up to the legal limits of CAP371, but I do think that the existing BA agreements are outrageously stacked against the company's ability to compete in the modern day market.
And incidentally, when will Concorde crews start operating LHR-JFK-LHR in a duty day? It's no longer a duty day than your average charter day out to DLM, HER, LCA and the like.
The whole job lot - BALPA, BASSA, CC89 agreements - need to be torn up and a bunch of BA and union people locked in a room for days to renegotiate something sensible to strike a balance between economic reality and the need to ensure your employees have reasonable working conditions.
But when will someone at BA have the balls to actually tackle this issue? People with guts to go out and achieve change at that airline are in noticeably short supply and 9/10ths of this is of management's own making as they are just too scared to tackle these problems head-on.
PS - Before you ask, I don't work for BA, any of its subsidiaries, franchises or associates in any way.