VS LHR:
I know that you are trying to keep the peace and you are doing a good job of it so far, but now perhaps you get the picture on how we feel daily? 016 painted an unfair but generalised picture of office staff; since this thread began cc have had mud slung at them from all directions, with posters saying our job is easy, takes no training and any old school leaver could do it! Not nice to hear I'm sure you will agree, but we're cabin crew so guess what? we put up with it!
Yes, I would agree that the majority of punters don't really have much of a perception of what crew do beyond serve drinks. That dreadful YouTube video posted on here earlier is a classic example. However, you've also got to appreciate that some crew think they're in a unique position having a tough job. That, unfortunately, doesn't win many friends if the person you're saying that to has their hand down a toilet 8 hours a day, or rips the gizzards out of chickens for a living. I think we all need to keep it in perspective here. Emergencies onboard are (thankfully) not everyday occurrences; travelling the world is still a luxury for most and the good passengers, for the most part, outweigh the bad ones.
I look at the CAA figures, and as far as I can tell, VS crew are a couple of thousand behind the rest of the pack (excluding BA, who for various reasons have rather a stonking deal, and to be honest, if I had an inclination to fly, that's were my application would be going!); but VS aren't the worse off. Most notably, the second largest airline out of Heathrow, bmi, is behind Virgin paying an average of £12.9K to its crew. I have to say, bmi is a closer match to Virgin than the My Travels, Thomsonfly or Monarchs being a full service, scheduled operator out of mainline airports. I'm not sure why the charters pay a couple of grand more, although my guess would be that's what they need to pay to attract enough staff? Probably. Regardless of your personal thoughts of SRB and the airline during this dispute, there is more 'cache' in saying you're Virgin Atlantic crew rather than My Travel (no offence to My Travel crew!).
So is this why Virgin (and bmi for that matter) can get away with paying so little? Is it also the reason why attempts to push beyond 4.8% have met with so much resistance?