rcg11x, perhaps you should focus your questions on the Virgin Atlantic management who have allowed industrial relation with their pilots to deteriorate to this level rather than just blame the pilots. It takes two to tango and you have to question the quality of management that is prepared to let their customers suffer for the sake of their overblown egos.
The Virgin pilots have not been offered any pay deal which is why they have balloted for industrial action. Pay negotiations were entered into last November yet the management team will not allow the union to ballot its members on any pay offer as they refuse to allow the offer to be put to the members unless the Balpa reps recommend the deal.
The management have not budged from their initial (non) offer since November and so the pilots have decided that they have no other option but to take industrial action. The intransigence of the management by refusing to allow a ballot on their supposed offer is the main reason that the pilots are taking the action even though they know that it will do much harm, not only to the airline and its customers but also to themselves.
They are not a bunch of militant lefties but a mature, well educated individuals with large responsibilities. They have been pushed into this corner by an an HR led assault on their working conditions and derisory pay (non) offers.
The engineers at Virgin decided a few years ago to give up their collective bargaining rights and have since had similar derisory pay rises imposed upon them. The pilots are not about to follow in their footsteps and are unanimous in their determination to prevent the HR department from fulfilling their promise of destroying the union.
Please direct your frustration at the Virgin management who are the real cause of the dispute. You wont get a straight answer because they are mostly revolving door managers who are using Virgin as a cash machine and will, during the course of many pilots and other employees careers, move on to other companies where they will apply their greedy and egoistic tactics to generate yet more chaos and disruption.