Not sure what you mean about an analogy, yes the pilots do have forced draft, for which they are paid handsomely for. a couple of years ago it seamed that forced draft was fairly common especially on the 777 due to the shortage of pilots.
As for the cabin crew in all the time Ive been at BA the crewing figures produced by man power never seam quite right, before you say it's crew sickness, at times it is, BA are currently asking crew to work in their none working part time for the whole of August, none that can be sickness because even BA don't have a Chrystal ball, we are at the usual point of being short of crew in August.
The flight crew do indeed mainly work to scheme especially in time of disruption, fine that's how it is. The way disruption is managed tends to be more sensible when it comes to forward rosters for our flight crew,for the cabin crew and the way we are managed, the flexible rostering could last weeks or months which isn't ideal.
E.g. if the the operational recovery agreement is implemented and an individuals roster has days of 24 hour they can have their forward roster changed until such a time there is no wastage in the roster, hardly conducive to planning, especially child care !
Unfortunately what BA is proposing regarding operational recovery will not just cover times of disruption, but WHEN EVER BA feel it's necessary, which would include times of crew shortage.
My main concern about this is the consequences of not being contactable on days off or being unable to get to LHR within 24 hours and obviously being unable to rely on days off.
In any decent sort of leadership there has to be some sort of incentive for people no matter how small and the incentive has to be positive.
We all know that 1 volunteer is better than 10 pressed men !!