Thanks for that VERY informative background Skylion. As I have said before (too many times) the die is long cast and BA is at the end of it's natural life span. It has lost market share which would take years and high cost to recover. They have neither in hand.
I say this with no delight but simply as I see it. BA will not be in the form that it is now within five years. IRRESPECTIVE of the outcome of this dispute, because the mistakes were made 10 and 20 years ago.
In this regard, the problem is very similar to the financial crisis that finally blew up in 2008. It was started 20 years earlier and it was stonkingly obvious that it was going to happen. By the time it did blow up - those who created it were all safely retired and on the golf course. The ones who were fiddling at the time of the blow out - were small fry and just the children of the ones who made the problem. Sure, they were doing stupid things - but only because that's how it had always been in the 5/10/20 years they had been in the financial business.
Mankind is not so clever as to make lots of new mistakes - they just make the same mistake in different ways.
Game over.