Litebulbs #1500
Where are you getting your £400m improvement in the financials from? The consensus forecasts I'm looking at suggest BA's loss for the year is now expected to be ~£565m. Prior to the Q3 trading statement, consensus forecasts were ~£600m loss, so the improvement is closer to £35m rather than £400m. A small profit (~£30m) is forecast for 2011. To put that in perspective, £30m will be about a 3% return on capital, following two years in which shareholders' funds will have declined by half.
I really think you need to widen your horizon a bit, and take a look at some of BA's other stakeholders, not just its various employee groups. When you consider the T&C changes being discussed here in the context of a 50% drop in shareholders' funds, and a decline in share price from the peak in early-2007 of 578p to 210p as of yesterday, a result for existing staff of no pay cuts and no compulsory redundancies is surely pretty good.