If you think that the company will accomodate balpa on a major decision like this if they conclude it is financially prudent to use non-mainline pilots then you will be in for a bit of a suprise.
Barry - it was financially prudent to slash NAPS, impose a career average final salary pension scheme (as supported by numerous staff groups) and ride roughshod over BALPAs objections. The savings BA could have made through that are a couple of orders of magnitude greater than any profits they could make from a US-EU operation, yet strangely enough they thought it important to keep the pilots onboard. I wonder why.
Incidentally are you actually a BA pilot Barry or just a spotter?