I'm baffled. Not for the first time with this whole dispute, but this ranks up there as a milestone in the silly season.
I quite often fly out of LGW to a rather nice - but often very warm - destination in Eastern Europe. I'm also used to hearing, on boarding the aircraft, that there'll be a possible 2 hour ATC delay. Often turns out to be 20 minutes, but anyway. The blinds are always pulled down when this happens - I assume because it's the middle of the afternoon, bloomin' hot, and the sun is beating down on the aircraft and if you're sat there for up to two hours then the APU isn't really an option. I consequently assume that the crew have no issues with doing the same on return to LGW, should it be a hot day there? So if this diktat has been imposed on LGW crew for as long as I can remember - why another big song and dance re: the LHR crew and where were BASSA when someone decided at Gatwick that this was to be working practice? And if it's not declared policy, then a big thanks to all crew who have the common sense to try and make things more pleasant for passengers.
Believe me I get the duty hours+ sneaking on the 5 mins extra argument as I've been there with an airline doing that to me, but this really is just coming across as trying to just be difficult for the sake of it. I just cannot grasp that every tiny alteration to working practices must be subjected to such scrutiny on every occasion. An effective union should be there to protect employees when there is a genuine concern - minor alterations to working practices just don't fall within this category. They just don't. Whatever happened to sound judgement and the ability to distinguish when there is a real need to go into bat for members? It's remarkable to me that window blinds are even up for debate, and yet New Fleet/Mixed Fleet was a big fat no to negotiation. Does anybody here seriously believe that the pages we're spending on discussion APU policies at airports was even in BASSA's mind when they brought this up? This is just a good old fashioned "let's be as difficult as we can be if we can't strike" tactic.
As a BA ff, I'm sticking with LGW and LCY whenever I can. I've finally had enough of this nonsense and the crew from those two bases have consistently delivered fantastic service - LHR is just too bogged down in this industrial dispute for me to chance spending my money on the possibility of crewmembers wanting to be difficult or play silly buggers.