BASSA offered £52m in savings that were costed by PWC. Even one shareholder at the AGM questioned the logic of rejecting those savings and instead embarking on a policy of confrontation with the union that has so far cost over £150m, and more than £900m lost in forward bookings.
The only reason why the large insitutional shareholders still publicly state they support the current LT at BA, is to say otherwise, will put the shares into freefall.
The strategy of provoking a strike then defeating it to union bust BASSA has failed. Last year Walsh stated that BA only had "six months to survive", then the airline made a small operating profit in the third quarter. On top of this Walsh has boasted about the cash BA has at its disposal to cope with the volcanic ash and over £3bn in a secured credit line.
If you read this:
ScienceDirect - European Management Journal : ‘Embracing and Exploiting Industry Turbulence: The Strategic Transformation of Aer Lingus’. Denis Harrington, Thomas Lawton, Tazeeb Rajwani [European Management Journal 23(4) August, 2005.]
you will see the blueprint for all that is going on at British Airways at the moment.