Desk Pilot -
I hope your future is assured within BA. It is understandable that you feel that 'us pilots' tend to blame all else before we turn upon ourselves. That is the nature of the group and this is unfortunately a pilots web site.
IM are probably the most ineffective/inefficient department in BA. None of you individually, are to blame, but the chaotic Database Management Systems that tangle and knot up the company remind of the cliche - "A good workman never blames his tools except in I.T.".
Running an airline is the most chaotic environment regarding data sharing and it would appear that British Airways has never had the balls to take on a long 'down-time' period in order to harmonise the data sharing amongst departments. Unfortunately the dark shadow of system instability bit us firmly on the arse in March when we lost many millions of revenue due to some 'human error' regarding our mainframe back up. Apparently this error was by a contractor, being paid enormous amounts, to do a job that ultimately had as much impact as one of our pilots pranging an aircraft (revenue not lives thankfully).
Pilots have given (according to BALPA) a productivity rise of 25% in the last few years compared to their salary. How do we measure your group?
It is harder to quantify isn't it?
What do we have to show from IM? A miserable March and some nifty E-Commerce.
Instead, we the pilots will continually be quoted by weasel journalists to be earning £50k plus as a new entrant rising to £200k for Senior Captains. I heard some programmers earn more than a Junior Captain. Fair? Who cares...
Allow me to quote a friend, who is a pilot, who was previously an office based manager. Upon hearing he had been accepted at the Oxford Air Training School he sat down at his desk and decided to test how long he could play Patience/Minefield/whatever on his PC before he was discovered to be shirking his role. After 3 weeks the novelty wore off.
That, to me, is the novelty of management. It has many facets but on the whole it is one of enforcement and monitoring. It is the link to the directors/Senior management that changes in business plan are carried out correctly. Our current plan is to do what we do well, with LESS aircraft and consequently LESS employees. That plan requires significantly less management because the plan is not for change but reduction. Our roles will be identical but just a little more work for a little less pay. It is not them and us. We just don't need many managers at the moment.
You keep the systems up and running, we'll fly the aircraft safely and we don't need people to draw graphs to show the senior management/directors how we're coping.