BA management is totally useless + Heathrow is opening more to quality competition = BA is doomed to disappear in the next 10 years.
When BA was a nationalised industry it had a deserved reputation for being an appalling airline in every respect. In the late 80s, when I was working for another U.K. airline, BA started to advertise for direct entry pilots and a pal encouraged me to apply. I did so with only half a mind to actually wanting to join, at the time I was content where I was.
I positioned (with BA) down to the LHR recruitment centre several times for the various stages of the interview process. As things progressed and I observed BA staff from a passenger perspective and spoke to several as well I was struck how enthusiastic everybody was and, don't laugh, what a pleasure flying with BA was on the three occasions I did so. I ended up really wanting to join them. I felt very lucky to be offered a job.
In the late 80s/early 90s the job was a joy. The airline functioned well, I believe we enjoyed a reputation for being reliable and efficient and actually deserved the advertising epithet 'The world's favourite airline'. Somewhere it all slowly unravelled. The world was changing and BA's cost base and legendary overmanning had to be tackled but like so many bloated organisations (NHS anybody?) removing the deadwood which needed removing in my simple view was akin to asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.
The savage (and necessary) cost cutting, from my simple observations, has disproportionately fallen on the very areas which have the most impact on the ability of the airline to function efficiently i.e. the front line.
Slowly but surely we have become a standing joke for punctuality, lost baggage, lack of ground staff, etc, etc. This has been capped by the continuing debacle of T5. I cannot tell you how desparately sad and depressed it makes me and many of my colleagues when we think about the sorry mess which BA has become.
Militant unions can indeed share some of the blame but we had militant unions during privatisation. The difference between then and now is the quality of the people at the very top. With the exception of Rod Eddington we have suffered at the hands of two CEOs who have/had nowhere near the skills exhibited by the likes of Sir Colin Marshall or Lord King.
Under the right leadership I hope and pray that BA can once again become the leading airline that we surely were in the recent past. I do not believe it will happen while we have WW at the helm. The effort required to salvage our tattered reputation and win back the justifiably angry and disillusioned long suffering passengers is gargantuan but we do have many people such as myself who will go to the ends of the earth to achieve that goal. We cannot do it alone without strong and visionary leadership.
I am near the end of my career but I stand to lose much of my projected pension should BA fold (late joiner with less than 25 years in the still very much underfunded pension scheme).
Your statement will be sadly true if we do not get our act together, and quickly.
Other airlines, with other T & Cs, will fill the void. The young pilots will more and more think of their future as being outside of BA, not within it.
I cannot argue with that. Regarding Ts and Cs I believe it will just accelerate the headlong rush to the bottom. Given the lifestyle and Ts and Cs enjoyed? by some of my friends in other airlines I doubt I would follow the same career path if I had my time again. While BA survives with Ts and Cs well above comparable jobs, certainly in the UK, that downward slide will be slower than if we did not exist.