Doh! You've taken the management pill James, haven't you! Have you understood anything I've said? OK lets explain this in simple steps for you.
1) Nobody's making any money at the moment except the low fares airlines.
2) You are not a low fares airline. You are a low pay airline. They are not the same.
3) Your fares are high, which means your pax are also going to switch to low fares airlines. Add in the concerns about the economy and 911 and there's a profits warning for you. It may be coincidental that it occurred at the same time as BA taking over you, but such is life.
4) BAR is profitable and has been for some time. BHX is very profitable, MAN is suffering due to high costs associated with MAN airport and competition from Easy at LPL. The franchises aren't doing terribly well at MAN either.
5) You may be proud of 'taking our business'. You haven't taken it, it's been given to you by BA management. If your so proud of your Embraers ask the ground staff what the passengers think of them, and why so many prefer to change their flight time so that they can fly on a large aircraft. Without the RJs arriving they'd all defect to LH/AF/UK.
6) BA is not the benchmark for airline salaries. Starting today at a major airline your earnings would be far higher at Easy, Ryanair or Go, either as a CEP or DEP. Our pilots are paid below market rate, which is tacitly acknowledged by the BA board, who also extol to the City the virtues of the cheapest long-haul flight crew of any major airline in the western world.
7) BA is flying round full aircraft, with junior flight crew on market or below rates and senior flight crew operating the cheapest long haul operation going. Safely. Punctually. Reliably. What else would you like us to do?
8) BA pilots haven't been on strike for ages, which makes us entirely different from the defunct British monoliths you care to mention. Nor do we work to rule.
9) I don't expect you to agree , far less understand. Your pre-conceptions and stereotypes speak volumes. You do yourself a disservice by associating managerial and strategic failure with workforce wages. The guys at Easy, Go, Southwest et al are well rewarded and their companies go from strength to strength. Now that you have the BACE management team on board I'm sure you'll be the first to embrace their strategy of'work more, get less'. But only for you that is.
Next time you find yourself on board a BA aircraft, or catch up with your ex-RAF mates who flt for BA, why not ask them what its really like in the company. You might even learn something.
Further edit for facts:
Bendy Lady - BAR cabin crew don't check seat backs because the cleaners do it when they clean the aircraft. And a very good job of it they do whilst the cabin crew check the catering, carry out their own SEP checks and find a moment to eat. They don't open service doors because BA policy is that no aircraft doors are opened unless there's a platform in place outside. You may think this is daft, but when one of the caterers fell off a 319 last year he spend a very long time in intensive care. As stated above, BAR are profitable,I think £10 million profit in a recent year which is as much as Brymon.
bral - Great. Inverness is a perfect example of what happens when franchises work. The EOG RJ crew may be able to stay at LGW, but because of seniority issues arising from the merger the Captains are likely to lose their commands. The pilots at BHX/MAN are on mainline contracts, but they are not LHR based. They are regionally based and many have never operated out of LHR or have any desire to do so. There may be jobs available at LHR, but thats not where they're from or where they want to be. They too like the locality and have no desire for heavier or faster aircraft. There's probably an RJ job for you in the SW of England, but do you want to move there? Don't believe what the cabin crew tell you about allowances. £200 per night? You could get a whole cabin crew on a split duty for that, and although the allowances are higher, the basic pay is considerably lower. I don't think BALPA should necessarily stop you flying a 110 seater, but I don't think the company should be allowed to transfer 16 aircraft from the BA/CFE register to BACE just because they have an un-costed, 'finger in the air' feeling about it (I know you won't believe that but that was the stated basis of the decision for transferring RJs to MAN!). If you think thats OK, then tell me why we shouldn't transfer the entire embraer fleet to a low-paying air taxi operator? After all, there's work for you elsewhere and it'll improve the companies bottom line.
Last edited by Hand Solo; 14th April 2002 at 22:11.