Under Walsh, BA is on the road to ruin. In over thirty years service with the airline I have never seen such a catastrophic collapse in crew morale and passenger satisfaction.
As an article in the Times yesterday implied; there is a choice of outcomes in the current dispute: Walsh will back down and lose credibility and authority or the airline will be ruined by a protracted and intensely bitter industrial action.
Although someone has said here before that Walsh would only be replaced with someone empowered with the same agenda, Walsh's tenure at Aer Lingus and the current state of that airline, demonstrates that he made a huge mistake there putting the airline into the low cost model. That alone has ensured its demise.
Sooner or later the penny will drop that BA was never in a "fight for survival", it was a pack of lies. If the company was in such dire straights temporary measures to save money would have been invoked as before, such as the closing of First cabins. However this management have tried to enforce the illusion that there has been a "structural change" in the business travel market, whilst at the same time having a mock up of the new First cabin in the the CRC for crew to view.
There could have been huge cost savings running for months this year as Unite/BASSA offered, but it was rejected by Walsh. Why if the company was in such a bad way, would a CEO refuse voluntary concessions, preferring imposition and a strike at the worst possible time in the calendar for the airline? Imposition is union busting, that is the objective of Walsh.
Yet as a negotiator for IALPA Walsh did such a good job, that some senior pilots at Aer Lingus earn over Euros 300,000 a year!!!! I find it hard to deal with such hypocrisy. One moment he fights for better T&C's as an IALPA rep, then as CEO of the same company he shuts the airline down for a week locking out employees.
I can assure you all here that next Monday, the game will be up for Walsh and his cronies.
Last edited by Fume Event; 11th Dec 2009 at 13:07.