I hope this falls within the Moderator's tolerance zone for this thread, in contributing a slightly different view. I have just flown back from the US on BA, Club Class - nine hour flight - rather tired and down-at-heel 747, with decidedly tense, edgy and defensive CC...unless my senses deceive me. The smiles were there, the service - what's left of it these days - was also there, but the eyes told a different story, and there was plainly friction between some crew members. Average age of this crew appeared to be high-30s - which itself tells one unfortunate (and increasingly significant) BA LHR CC story - and after what appeared to be as rapid and requirement-filling service as possible they all vanished for the duration - well, at least until brekky was served, in a somewhat perfunctory manner.
I was sitting adjacent to the galley and a couple of times heard raised voices there, with 'the reps' being a frequently mentioned phrase. In other words there was palpable tension in the air, and the cause seemed pretty unmistakeable. The strike - threat of it - or imposition of it from the union faction - seems uppermost in their minds. The LHR CC - I understand - cut the Gatwick CC adrift some years ago to protect their own terms and conditions. Today they seem willing - if we believe the union mouthpieces - to risk every other employee group's futures, again to protect their own.
Virtually every other department of what I still - as SLF for forty years or more - regard as a great national carrier, seem to have taken a financial and Ts&Cs hit "for the team", yet here one of the most pampered, most praised and yet most simply-qualified groups of employees are encouraged not just to defend a favoured status quo, but to risk caving-in the entire company to do so. If the militants so detest BA why compromise their rapidly-passing life by working for it (we all know the answer to this one). Having once sold out, they refuse to contemplate any change to those terms. When that creates the in-flight atmosphere I have just encountered, it makes flying by BA less congenial than it most certainly has been, and should still be. That in itself compromises BA's ticket saleability. If 'SLF disturbance' is another sackable offence, I'm all for it being added to the list...
iwalkedaway