A return to the 'Core Product' at BA would mean alot of redundancies across the board. Route closures and aircraft parked up. Something that would be difficult to resurrect at short notice when an upswing comes and we crawl out of recession.
The company is trying to avoid such a scenario as far as I can see.
Unfortunately holding on to 1970's working practices will not help keeping people in jobs and, irrespective of the contrary opinions on this thread, there is an awful lot of fat to be culled in IFS.
Lets hope it's not too late and something productive can finally come out of BASSA.