MPN11
Not hard ball at all and all valid points, but I would suggest that you are talking about the extremes, rather than the majority.
If you take out all other factors, then seeing a new fleet of employees on minimum wage plus expenses, when you are either above or a long way above that position, will bring a certain amount of fear for your future. That will be the majority position. There will be some who are at the very top, who will be fearful of far more than that, but it is the majority who count and it will be the majority that will decide the end to this.
As to a career change, if you go from one profession to another, but retain a package broadly the same, then all well and good. The elephant in the room here, is that you will have a large number of employees who are type cast to the current job and ALL of its benefits and whose most recent training has been solely for there current job. To take those skills to an equivalent UK based employer will in all probability lead to a pay cut.
So to put it simply, BA crew are paid on the face of it, above the market rate for the role in the UK and their employer has introduced new employees below this. If it was me, I would be worried and be striving for watertight guarantees. Whether they are achievable is the discussion point.