Colonel White
They also have a very specialised skill set which, if you have no other job history, can be quite difficult to reuse in other roles. So they've painted themsleves into a corner in a job that is now wholly reliant on BA being able to continue to maintain the status quo. Note I say job rather than career.
To quote my Oxford dictionary, a career is defined by "course through life in a profession or occupation" and a job as "paid employment". Ergo, a person may make a career out of any job they please! It does not have to be one that meets
your idea of what constitutes a suitable profession.
Excellent Customer service skills are not so specialised and, in fact, BA crew have historically found it easy to make a move across to any number of customer focused companies particularly retail, hotel, sales, property, police force, etc. If they have management experience or off-line experience in say recruitment, training, etc. which have been acquired within BA, then that increases their future prospects. (Some of those crew who have lost their jobs in this recent IA dispute, have already found alternative employment within those sectors.) There are many high profile people (think talk-show host) who have done a stint as cabin crew in their early days and the UK training manager of a large motor company was once a BA hostie!
Staying with BA is actually a life-style choice based on the desire to make a
career out of a job one enjoys. One of the fears that BASSA is manipulating within their membership is that the choice of whether to make this a career will be taken away. Please try not to be condescending, the tone of your post sounded so smug I felt compelled to reply
OG