Neil,
thanks for your friendly word of advice. Or maybe you should f*** o** and stop discouraging the CEP hold pool people. Why? Because nobody knows when the scheme will resume, apart from you obviously. Now before you bore me and everyone else with your apparent insight in the aviation industry, or the fact that you are a "realist", do everyone a favour and "realise" this:
Nobody can forecast what's going to happen. Yes, things will resume, but when this happens, nobody knows. 10 months? 18? 5 years? Is this worse than the gulf war? It may seem gloomy so at the moment, but the bottom line is that things depend mainly on consumer confidence, and nobody can claim to reliably know when this will resume. These things have happened before, and BA is in a great position to see this through.
If you had "sources" within BA, you would know well that even they don't know what's going to happen. Everyone hopes this will recover soon, and I'm sure that includes applicants as well as those responsible for the CEP scheme. I don't doubt for a second that BA will survive this better than any airline exposed to the transatlantic routes.
I am curious, then, why it is "a clear fact" that things will not resume within a year.
You're kiddin me, right? The industry is in turmoil? I would have never guessed. LOOK - you're telling everyone what they already know. It's just about hoping things will work out AND being realistic at the same time. Some of the people who *do* actually give productive advice on this forum, such as WWW, may well paint a gloomy picture of the future. At least they say what their assumptions are based on and they're genuinely helping the wannabees. You're not.
CAT - shame you didn't get in. Obviously you have the answers all figured out. Maybe you and neil767 should get together and, using your infinite wisdom, come up with the answers for all of this.
