Anti-Ice if you look back through this thread you'll see somebody has already quoted that BBC news story from 24th July 2001, although he conveniently chose not to mention the date of it. As I said back then, have you forgotten what happened a couple of months after that story? Uniteds pilots don't have that payrise anymore, I'm not dure DLs do either. I'm fairly sure Lufthansas strike was before Sept 11th, plus they did at least give notice that they would be striking every Tuesday, allowing the public to change their travel plans. I'll exclude Air france as they're a nationalised industry that can't go bust and striking is the French national pasttime.
I'd not seent he Mail on Sunday story before, but I would say that anything the Mail writes should be treated with a whole shovelful of salt.
The one thing that stands out from both those stories is that despite the prophecies of doom, there were no flight crew strikes. Negotiation resolved the issues, even if Ayling was hell bent on causing and then smashing a strike. Why can't the ground staff do that now? Is it because the GMB don't want to negotiate, and believe they should run the company for the benefit of their members?