BA Humbug!!!
This is my 1st post having been reading this thread for many months. I am filled with a sense of foreboding for everyone involved to the extent I believe that BA will look a very different business in 12-18 months time. Not neccessarily to everyone's benefit. The personalisation of the dispute with WW is inevitable BUT malicious and badly misguided. The appointment of Broughton as chairman heralded a sea change in how the company was to be managed going forward. Let's face it as an accountant by profession and a board member to boot Broughton was well aware of the underlying issues that were hampering BA's financial progress. I have no doubt that Willie Walsh's terms of reference on appointment included a requirement to restore shareholder value. This is a business that has all but destroyed that value, by my calculation we have failed to pay out a dividend on fifteen of the last sixteen calls. Plus the share price hovers some 75p above the flotation price which in real terms, taking account of inflation, means that we investors have lost money. Does this simple fact resonate with staff involved in the current dispute? Not a bit. Their determination to hold on to a Byzantine set of scheduling agreements, against a background of pay scales that are the envy of many both inside and outside our industry, beggars belief. Especially given the dramatic downturn in the fortunes of legacy carriers such as BA during this global recession. In the past BA could avoid tackling "fortress LHR" by harvesting all the low hanging fruit in the guise of shutting down BA Regional, N.Atl services from BHX, GLA & MAN, contact centres in BFS & GLA and many other initiatives away from the south-east to buy time before inevitably having to tackle the vested interests at home. I was some 36 years with BA, half that time as a manager. As an example I can remember first hand the impact of the Disruption Agreement on our customers during diversions and that was in my early days with the airline. That this "agreement" is still in place some 30 years after I witnessed its negative impact speaks volumes for the company's failure to grasp the nettle and deal with these matters over time. That all of this is coming to a head now is a sad reflection on past management and TU representatives to sit down and thrash out T & C's appropriate to the economic circumstances of the times.
Travelling through T5 yesterday I was somewhat chastened to think what might have been if a point of law had not prevailed and prevented such a callous act in the form of a 12 day stoppage. The architects of that decision should be hanging their collective heads in shame that they would consider ruining our customers Christmas holidays in such a tawdry way.