Land ASAP,
a) 767s to LCA - Britannia and Airtours. They each have one 767-300 roundtrip per week ex LGW to LCA this summer and have operated numerous in the past, all on a straight crew duty day.
b) At certain times of day, I'm not kidding that LGW has more holding than LHR. I've been to both - frequently.
c) Yes, sim time does count as duty time. But it doesn't count towards your annual flying limit of 900hrs, as in the BAEG agreement. Are you on BAEG or mainline contract? It seems as though there are some differences in the contractual terms between the two, which would indicate that BAEG are less productive than mainline, when in fact they are the ones having to fight easyJet on costs at LGW!
d) No you didn't mention LGW rostering programmes but I did - as an example of what I see to be gross inefficiency contributing to BA's losses.
e) The bit about being taken off the trip and still getting your allowances isn't crap under the BAEG agreement. It may be for mainline but at least part of BA is working to this - and that is a part of BA which is allegedly losing a lot of money, hence it is reasonable to discuss it here under the thread title.
f) Crewing of the Middle East routes isn't a BASSA issue as the cabin crew do work the sensible pattern I outlined and take the aircraft all the way through to its end station. The pattern is different for flight crew and so it's a BALPA issue!
Personally, you can't blame pilots for the state of the agreement. It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas if they opted to give up a number of the clauses in the scheduling agreements and I wouldn't expect them to do that voluntarily for one minute.
However, I don't think the current situation with regard to some of these issues can continue ad infinitum. It has to change otherwise BA's cost base will never come down to allow it to compete profitably with its rivals.
To achieve a change, you need a management which is pre-disposed towards achieving change (as opposed to inertia at present) and a group of people on the other side of the table who accept that some change is necessary. At the moment, you have a significant proportion of the 50,000 people in BA believing the worst thing that can happen this year is that BA doesn't make a profit. It could be far worse than that; and the sooner all involved sit round a table to agree something which will enhance job security, the better BA's long-term prospects (and those of its employees) will be.