Obviously BA is a business and businesses exist to make a profit but in order to do that they have to fulfil their primary function. If you are a major global business providing a significant part of the worlds and your home countries infrastructure though you cannot just put profit and shareholders first. Sometimes this is imposed by regualtion and sometimes not. The Uk favours a laissez faire approach as a rule, one of the reason some dislike the EU, no more compensation after 2019??.
Anyway there has to be a method or model that prevents those who put pressure on organisations for year on year profit increases and cost cuts. These are largely financial instititions who we have found in recent years to be seriously delinquent in pretty much anything they touch but very greedy. As a pensioner I want my pension to increase but not in a way that gives me an increase every year and then collapses , people running these funds need to understand that there are short term and long term businesses. An airline is long term-order an aircraft now get it in 2-3 years. Airlines are subject to all kinds of uncontrolled events -politics, wars volcanic ash clouds and the weather in general .
So although i want my pension to increase I do not expect my provider to engage in what i call the three year olds strategy of just shouting more more more ate mum or dad and crying if it doesnt get more. There is no skill in that. In the case of BA their management have sold their souls to the market , forgotten their customers and bully their staff into worse and worse conditions while taking more and more money themselves.
They have been found out this time, whatever the cause it is essentially their fault for taking a risk on outsourcing and its come back to haunt them and done every very severe harm to a brand that took decades to build. Senior management build a people model in their own image, they want people who are like them and dispose of critics or experienced professionals as the are 'out of step' with the 'modern British Airways etc etc. An MBA case study for years to come but I doubt that much will be elarned from it