Senseless phantom flight epitomises BA woes
The story that British Airways managers tell of the empty 747 British Airways flight from Prestwick to London reveals a lot about the disastrous set of problems BA is facing this weekend. The strikes may have been postponed, hopefully for good if the unions have any sense, but the issues which they reveal run deep and are not yet solved.
By Kamal Ahmed
Published: 7:15PM GMT 19 Dec 2009
In February, when the snow lay thick on the ground and Heathrow was closed, many flights were diverted to airports which were still open for traffic. One such flight, a BA service from Cape Town to London, was sent to Prestwick, kept snow free because of its proximity to the mild gulf stream waters of the Atlantic. Cabin crew, pilots and passengers were put up in local hotels and plans were made to fly them out again as soon as possible.
That was until the dreaded "workplace agreements" came into place. These documents, by which all industrial relations in BA are governed, are some of the most Byzantine set of rules and allowances in existence in the private sector. They have been built up over decades, some of the provisions stretching back to the dim and distant world of BOAC.
The agreements make it clear that managers at BA can only make decisions on matters that cause "severe disruption", such as the weather, "after agreement with the Trades Unions" including "contacting the chairperson of each of the Trade Unions" and "fully debriefing the Trades Unions", with decisions recorded in the "Worldwide Steering Minutes".
It sounds like someone has reached back to the 1970s and pulled the document straight off a dusty shelf marked "industrial relations from a different era".
On that snowy weekend, senior BA sources have told me, the quickest and most passenger-friendly thing to do was fly the plane back from Prestwick the next day to London. OK, everyone would be a day late, but at least they would be at the right destination.
But this, the managers say, clashed with the workplace agreements on two nights off after a long-haul flight. The pilots were happy to fly. The cabin crew were happy to fly. But the unions said no.
So, with no cabin crew, the plane flew back to London empty, taxis had to be called for the stranded passengers to get them to Glasgow and onto other domestic flights to London. Everyone wasted more time and there was more disruption. Passengers were sacrificed on the sacred altar of "workplace agreements".
The key question is, who runs BA? The managers, answerable to the board and shareholders, or the unions, answerable to their members? If it is the latter – and this fight over, at its simplest, how many cabin crew there are on a flight, suggest that it is – then BA will never get itself out of the horrible hole it finds itself in.
Gordon Brown and Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, know the mess being stored up here. I am told the Prime Minister rang Tony Woodley directly, urging a conciliatory approach, last week. Peter Mandelson, the Business Secretary, must be tearing his hair out over the damage this dispute has already done to BA and its bottom line. If the strikes go ahead in the New Year, the cost could be up to £20m a day. This, for a company that is set to lose more than £400m this financial year.
There are some glimmers of hope. Many of the BA cabin crew at Gatwick – incidentally paid far less than many of their colleagues at Heathrow – are already on the new crewing arrangements, which are working perfectly well. If the strike does go ahead, BA expects many of the flights from Gatwick to operate.
Secondly, there has been clear shock among many BA staff at the idea that they were ever signing up to 12 days of action. The cheers from union officials when the ballot was announced has also left a very bad taste in the mouth for many staff. Some officials appear to delight in destructive action.
Unite has said it will reballot but this time staff may be less willing to back industrial action over crewing issues that are nothing to do with safety or compulsory redundancies, but more to do with the way staff work.
As my page on The Telegraph website reveals – as it does every time I write about BA – passions run high on this issue. Staff point out that they do not want to be put in a position where they lose money. That is perfectly understandable, but Willie Walsh has to change the cost structure of BA, and its very high fixed staff costs in comparison to the rest of the industry, if BA is to survive.
If anyone is in any doubt about the importance of this to BA's future, read how may people say on web forums that BA could well go the way of British Leyland. There is the old joke that BA is a massive pensions deficit with a few aircraft attached. If the strike goes ahead and is extended, the company could be sucked into a downward spiral which would damage its very core.