The conspiracy theorists amongst you may like this one.
BA realised fairly early in this whole game that the real savings were to be made with NewFleet. Early on in the process NF was taken off the table but at this point BASSA were playing silly power games and it became obvoous to BA that bigger long term savings and a chance to sweep away a lot of spanish practices was a real possibility.
So when BASSA announced the 12 days of Christmas BA decided to add ST to the mix. Why would they do this? It may have had the effect of weakening the resolve of some strikers, particularly the commuters, but more importantly it was a classic piece of misdirection. With the union focusing on ST and disciplinaries, BA has just gone ahead with NF.
Supposing UNITE were to win the case against the imposition of reduced numbers, they will not get the crewmember back, it is more likely to be a little compensation - not the "working down" payments they have missed out on but some compensation. This will be heavily appealed by BA and dragged out for many years.
If they win the ST battle, BA can vary the terms of ST at their whim. They can alter it as they did last year, they can enhance it for some staff groups, NF perhaps, and degrade it for other groups, WW and EF perhaps. As I said earlier though, this is but a distraction as they push ahead with the introduction of NF.
I would be amazed if the potentially high box payment routes of Haneda and Buenos Aires are not flown by NF, the savings per crew rotation would be immense. The actions of BASSA here have not only allowed BA to bring about NF - which could have been avoided and at one stage of the whole sorry saga of this dispute was not part of the equation, but their actions have now allowed BA to forge ahead with NF. ST has been used by BA as a magician uses misdirection - you are made to look exactly away from the real action.
If BA are forced to return ST - and they will appeal forever to avoid doing so, I doubt WW or anyone else in the leadership team will bat an eyelid. They will have had what they wanted and more and BASSA will look back on this period and ask How? What? Who?