A few facts, boring and unsensational as they are.
SkyNews interviewed Mr Boyd this morning and he maintained that 90% of their membership are supporting the strike. That is the view of Mr Boyd and he is entitled to hold that view and would certainly be expected to back that up with a compelling argument.
Percentages can be misleading unless you clearly specify what the percentage relates to.
Assuming that there are approx 11,000 BASSA members and 1100+ reported for work yesterday, it could accurately be said that approx 9900 did not actually report for work yesterday.
If you take Mr Boyd’s understanding of the situation, you would possibly claim that the 9900 who were not required to swipe in yesterday were supporting the strike and hence the statement that "90% of your members were supporting the strike".
The alternative view is that the level of true support will not be evident until ALL crew have actually had to check in for duty. Given the number of people on leave, 75%, 50% or 33% part time contracts, on longer trips such as 9 day BKK/SYD or SIN/SYD, 5 day SIN, HKG, JNB etc with MBT and you start to see the logistical problem of determining an accurate level of support.
The fact remains that BA planned and successfully achieved a reduced flying program yesterday. It had surplus cabin crew and put them on 24hr availability in local hotels or they have gone home. The volunteer workforce did not get utilised and there was indeed some disappointment amongst it's ranks but I feel that their services will be required in due course. Today’s flying program has been increased from the planned level and there is every reason to believe that it will be achieved.
Finally, and this is specific to WW crew. Virtually all trips are a minimum 3 day with 2/3 days MBT (minimum base turnaround) so if you were due to report for a trip yesterday and opted to strike, by Bill Francis’ specific reckoning, you are out of the equation for 5/6 days and as he stated that you will be brought back to flying in a reasonable time frame as required by BA, your next available work day would be probably Friday 26th March, one day before the next planned strike dates 27th to 30th March. It would reasonably be assumed that you would support that action so the earliest you would be required would be 31st March and that is at the very earliest.