Stall Pusher...Glorious Leader and Chief Comrade.......(cf. Private Eye)

Have you ever considered a career in politics?...I only ask because you have yet to give a direct answer to a direct question, specifically did BASSA know that pilots had agreed to a reduction of their T&Cs before releasing the infamous statement and do now you accept that pilots are accepting a reduction in their T&Cs? ( a "yes" or "no" answer will do)


Oh, BTW, your much beloved Soviet/German "non-aggression pact", which you've insisted on comparing with the BALPA/BA negotiated settlement; remind me again who came out on top of that "little" 20th Century disagreement....or would going that far be another "inconvenient truth"

One thing we can agree on: all will indeed be revealed in the next week or two.

Stall Pusher
I can understand why many CC do not come to this website as it is PPRUNE (Professional Pilots), which is also a good reason why many pilots are drawn to visit and read what is being said here.
We also know that journalists come to this website seeking information.
Under the current climate of aviation with large losses being announced and forecast do you believe your views read by many is building support for your cause and more so BASSA’s stance from what we have seen so far?
With hundred losing their jobs in other airlines I doubt you are building much solidarity.

I'm not rewriting anything, the information is all in the public domain and verifiable, it's just that you don't like it and you don't want to to be true.

We did, and it was, and it screwed up the opening of T5. But T5 is breaking records now and yes, we did make a record breaking profit last year. The fact that we've gone from a record breaking profit to a record breaking loss is not a failure of Walsh, unless you have your head in the sand and believe nothing has changed in the world except the oil price (......oh, hang on). If it hadn't been for the changes Walsh drove through we'd have gone from an average profit to an even bigger loss. Believe the BASSA propaganda if you like but nobody - I repeat, nobody - with any business sense believes Walsh has lost all credibility.

It's all in the Avion accounts and due diligence will have revealed that before the purchase. I think Open Skies was a waste of money too, but you can't claim BA weren't competent enough to know what they were buying. Open Skies has cost BA less than the two day ruck they had with the cabin crew after their last ballot.

I'm not dissapointed, I'll be pleased if it goes, and BALPA did get a bloody nose. Again, does that give him more credibility amongst investors or less?

And as countless people have said, your claim is pure fantasy! You completely refuse to recognise that the premium market we made our revenue from has almost completely disappeared. Willie Walsh and Keith Williams stood up at the annual shareholders meetings and reported this information, backed up by accounts verified by the auditors, and yet if your claim is true then everybody must be conspiring to fiddle the accounts. Even other airlines! Ludicrous!


No, they avoid it because they prefer the comfort blanket of an anonymous forum where everybody agrees with them. That way the extremists can spout whatever vitriol they like, the moderators can control the agenda and nobody will be allowed to present a dissenting view. You can't get away with posting rubbish unchallenged here, and people will notice when your arguments are full of holes and based on rubbish and pick that feeble argument apart in no time at all. It's interesting that by and large the cabin crew posting on this thread are the ones who've thought the issue through for themselves and not the ones who swallowed the BASSA propaganda.

None have left in protest over Open Skies (much as BASSA would like you to believe that), and if walsh knows BALPA are a busted flush how come they have access to the companys accounts (after signing a confidentiality agreement) and Walsh and Williams will meet the pilots at BALPAs request when you can't even get the former to listen to your ridiculous list of demands? I know which union I'd rather belong to.

I'm sure it will, and I'll bet you that it's another angry "Newsflash" in which the failure to agree is no fault of BASSAs despite them negotiating hard in good faith and regretfully they have to call a strike ballot. We'll then get a big round of "Vote YES" stickers, a 95% response in support of the ballot, a High Court injunction against the strike from BA, 90 days notice on your contracts and a collapse in support for BASSA before everyone scuttles back to work. I wrote that in red so that it's easy to come back and find in 3 months time so we can see who was right.

The Molotov/Ribbentrop non -aggression pact was a classic act of betrayal and double dealing, hence the comparisom. Walsh has got the pilots onside, for now, with a sweetheart deal. Yet BA flight crew think this was down to "intelligent negotiating" by BALPA who found an "elegant solution". A bit of bedtime reading for pilots should be the life and times of Niccolo Machiavelli.

For the record I am not privvy to anything BASSA does and I do not have inside information.

I think it is time to get to the heart of the problem and that is Walsh's confrontational style. If he was sincere about everyone in British Airways working together, making sacrifices, working harder, to get the company through these difficult times, he would have gone about it in entirely a different fashion:

1. Cuts in capacity would have happened much earlier.

2. Fuel inefficient aircraft such as the 757 would have been grounded toute suite, rather than holding onto them for OpenSkies expansion which hasn't happened.

3. Unpaid leave, part time working and voluntary severance would have been given before the summer programme rather than being held back firstly as a carrot to get crew onto the new Single Fleet and secondly, being used as a lever to force through changes in T&C's.

4. BA has briefed the Press against cabin crew and Walsh has taken the unprecedented step of destroying public confidence in British Airways by his public pronouncements of the airline being on its last legs, which has led to a collapse of forward bookings. Even Richard Branson could not have done a better job of rubbishing BA and its staff. If a CEO was intent on protecting and nurturing a business thorugh a crisis, this is exaclty the opposite way to go about it.

If the Flight Crew community in BA are happy to fund all the mistakes made by Walsh and his management, that is up to them. Let us see what happens first: Walsh is removed by the Board, or BA goes bust.

Allegations of a 'sweetheart' deal come from BASSAs mouth and nowhere else. They are also deliberately misleading as they miss out substantial parts of the deal which have a negative effect on pilots. Of course BASSA knew that on 15th June but haven't bothered to clarify there comments over the last week. Now if BALPA really was the busted flush you suggest it is then why isn't Walsh coming down hard on the pilots now? BALPA negotiated smarter than your team (as they did with the pensions crisis). Get over it.

For the rest of your points:

1). You can't cut capacity rapidly without losing slots. BA have been cutting capacity as much as they can for months. With the alleviation of the slot usage rules we're grounding yet more aircraft and cutting back on frequencies and capacity.

2)Open Skies was never intended to have more than 5 757s, and you can't ground the aircraft until you have something to replace them with. The replacements will only arrive when Airbus can deliver them. You seem to think fleet changes can be made overnight just like that. They can't.

3)Unpaid leave, part time working and voluntary severance have been available for other departments for ages. You can't offer it to flying crew until you can cut capacity and make those positions unnecessary. See point 1 as to why you can't do that. Furthermore, offering these things to crew would simply prolong the inefficiences rather than fix them. It costs more to employ two part-timers than one full-timer.

4) The collapse in forward bookings started last September, and was re-emphasised at the shareholders meeting when Walsh refused to give any earnings guidance. That was long before the press briefing starts. This is not a chicken and egg scenario. The dire trading conditions came long before the bad press, it's quite clear which came first.

BA isn't going bust, and Walsh isn't going to be removed by the board. He's doing what they've wanted somebody to do for a long time.

Stall Pusher you just stated....

So perhaps you can explain your personal message to me on the 19th Jun which stated........

You certainly allude to have 'inside information'..... but like many of your arguments you are totally blinkered to the black and white facts and totally ignore data that does not fit your argument. A very dangerous human failing.

Or Flaps 40 - perhaps you might like to explain yourself please ?

Being "gagged" was being 'Moderated' off the forum for a while because I had been beastly to someone.

What was the question? If I had the answer, whatever that was, it did not come from BASSA.

That was not the PM I sent you, you have edited it. Why would you do that?

SP, you and BASSA don't like Willie Walsh purely and simply for the fact that he has the balls and audacity to go after the Cabin Crew.

How many years have various other departments been complaining about their slow restructuring whilst the CC, supposedly by good BASSA negotiation, have retained the majority of their 9170's style working practices. 15? 20 years?

Walsh was brought in to cull the senior Cabin Crew down to an acceptable, manageable and affordable size. That is the reason why the board have been backing him all of this time. The investors love him as they can finally see a light at the end of a long, dark unionised tunnel. The company is not run for Long Haul senior Cabin Crew, yet they seem to think they run it through their laminated cards and 'industrial' limits as opposed to the company limits.

Hopefully we can see a change soon, bring the control of the CC under Flight Ops (ironically where most other airlines already have it), the full command of the crew under the Captain and an end to ridiculous and embarrassing situations such as CC requiring 48 hours off following a diversion! If the pilots can get minimum rest and then fly the aircraft down with pax then why can't the crew?

Lets give the airline and the service back to the customers and away from over bearing, over paid and under-worked CSDs.

Finally, the BALPA plan stands whether or not the other departments cut a deal. If you don't negotiate like grown ups then there will be changes imposed and we will have our agreed changes. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't!

A story doing the rounds is that BA CC cost double VS CC per flying hour, is this correct ?

Even if the above false, most views appear to be that BA CC are paid way over market rate !

I just don't see an easy way out of this problem, BA CC have bills to pay like most people, these bills will not go away if they take a hugh pay cut.

I think both unions and management have caused the above problems over many many years of doing nothink, now all staff will pick up the tab.

June 30th, summer holidays, forward bookings, premium yield down for the distance, APD, UK taxes to increase and UK-NZ return flights being sold at £369 incl will make for an interesting few months indeed.

I wish all the CC well.

Before he edits his previous post, Ill recreate SP's post number 1009:


Ha, ha. Very mature Stall Pusher.

You are lying. Here is a screen shot by from my PM inbox to prove that.....

You will see what I wrote and your message are identical.


http://www.pprune.org/%5Burl=http://...g%5D%5B/url%5Dhttp://img32.imageshack.us/img32/4158/pprune.jpg


So - Why would you do that?

So what else are you lying about ?http://www.pprune.org/%5Burl=http://...g%5D%5B/url%5Dhttp://www.pprune.org/%5Burl=http://...g%5D%5B/url%5D
I'm just not going to rise to your pathetic games.

OpenLies. The topic of this thread is about British Airways and Project Columbus.

And your point is:

I haven't gone off topic SP.

The current Topic is why BASSA is lying and deliberatly misleading its members.

You specifically asked me the following question:

I have clearly shown that I haven't lied, but you have.

Yes, this is highly relevant to the topic as it puts many of your postings into context, showing you to have lied and been inconsistent in your postings.

The data above shows that you have lied, ignored the facts and still not answered the question. Not unlike BASSA.


Bye bye.

What a hoot.....
 

I have to say this is the most entertaining thread on Pprune for years!

But seriously - BASSA are doing their members NO favours with their Ostrich impression. They have spent so long telling both their members and BA what to do that they have completely forgotten what their purpose in life is - to represent the interests of ALL their membership, not just the old contract pursers and csds at Fortress Heathrow. By leading them over the cliff they have ensured that the coming pain will be far worse for them that it needed to be. By progressively abandoning cabin crew in the various BA outposts (LGW, Citiflyer, the Regions) they have lost all peripheral support for their cause, and fatally undermined their own position.

How can any organisation tolerate the cost disparity between a 272 seat 777 from LGW being crewed by 10, led by a Cabin Manager on £27k plus hourly rate, versus a 223 seater crewed by 12 from LHR led by a CSD on £35k plus Box payments, destination payments, one down payments, no-bunk-on-long-range payments PLUS allowances, AND absurdly restrictive "off roster" agreements?

Both are sold, quite rightly, as the full BA "brand", and yet the LGW product is offered at MUCH lower cost, and, in my view, with as high if not higher, quality.

THAT is the fundamental economic reality that BA shareholders and ticket buyers see. They, and by extension BA management, are no longer prepared to pay the "Danegeld" of buying off the obstructionists in BASSA. A hard rain is about to fall, don't say you haven't been warned.

Open Lies ......... :D:D:D:D:D


I've been following this thread closely without getting involved as I find it very interesting.

Lets face it, Anyone in the position of losing a fair chunk of their pay check is going to kick up a fuss. We cant blame them for that at all! However, the blinkered view of a few members in this forum are talking pure cr*p.

To survive, BA are going to have to make a lot of cost cutting, including cabin crew wages/allowences. End of.

Personally I think the moderators should consider banning Stall Pusher from this conversation as it has been proved now that he/she is stirring the pot and riling everyone up. Id much prefer a reasoned conversation going on rather than sensationalist cr*p based on absolutely no evidence and actively ignoring information that contradicts what they are saying.

Thats my 2p anyway. Good luck to the majority of cabin crew who realise there is a problem and want to negotiate the best result.

Chris

I think banning anyone from a thread for purely voicing their opinions is a travesty.

Lets face it, there have been heated, deep seated opinions from both sides of the fence, which has led this to being one of the most entertaining threads on Pprune at the moment.

Purely because an individual chooses to refuse to budge on an argument doesn't make them wrong. Whilst I disagree with what SP says and I think he/she is a good google searcher for his/her references I do think he/she has added quite al ot to this discussion if just through pure stubbornness! In fact a pure, thoroughbred BASSA representative, the stubborn willingness to ignore facts staring them in the face will see them through .......... to a nasty train wreck of a contract!

Keep going SP, I could do with a laugh at the moment! :ok: :}

Even if we would pay fuel at todays prices,
even if Willie would be replaced by someone else,

The company would still be in the same dire situation!!

Cost savings would still have to be made!!

Please make up your own mind by getting facts and figures from independent sources.

Hmmm, Pilots seem to have been invited to a couple of forums at some location?. First on 30th June with the CFO and the second on 02nd July with the CEO!

Might just get a heads up then, but, hang on, that could well be too late for BASSA, bet the 06 July meeting will be a cracker!

quote- runway vacated

How can any organisation tolerate the cost disparity between a 272 seat 777 from LGW being crewed by 10, led by a Cabin Manager on £27k plus hourly rate, versus a 223 seater crewed by 12 from LHR led by a CSD on £35k plus Box payments, destination payments, one down payments, no-bunk-on-long-range payments PLUS allowances, AND absurdly restrictive "off roster" agreements?

Both are sold, quite rightly, as the full BA "brand", and yet the LGW product is offered at MUCH lower cost, and, in my view, with as high if not higher, quality.

well, you got a point. you dont run a jensen interceptor on 12 mpg when you can get 55mpg out of a new car! much as you might like the retro styling! still wondering if walsh shelves newfleet threat would bassa accept everyone working to lgw t&c's? which would mean complete flexibility throughout bases etc. you guys do it- why shouldn't we? :confused:

In light of what exactly SP?