bealine
How interesting, though, that you used the British Post Office as your analogy because, for all the rhetoric and supposition over the cabin crew dispute, not one newspaper drew on the parallels between BA and Royal Mail!
Wow - that IS funny.
I chose the Post Office as it is such a good example of the right action being taken (reduce costs) but at the wrong time and on a time-scale set by politicians and accountants. My guess is that the T5 idea of 'running on auto' was sold to both BA + BAA on the basis of cost saving NOT on service delivery. Oh yes, of course, service delivery would have been high on the list - but not to anyone who understands where the travelling public are.
Quite apart from the staggeringly obvious - when something goes wrong, we want to see a human being. That is the same for ANY line of enquiry. I'll bet some of those senior managers don't understand the frustration with websites where you cannot find the answer, then calling the 'help line' to be told whilst waiting that, "There is so much information and help on our web site." because they don't do that themselves.
It's not just BA + BAA that have caught this disease. The whole of the British govt has been based on it for the past couple of decades!
OK, end of rant.