BA to announce record profits of £525 m
 

According to the 'Mail on Sunday' BA will announce this profit latter this week. Staff should all receive bonuses in excess of £500. I do not wish to appear smug but that puts us back as one of the top earners. Whatever, it can only be good for the whole industry.

Does this mean the staff have been short changed again by accepting the last rubbish pay deal?

Since we are going for a 10% operating margin, and we are not there yet, I'd say we have not been short changed with our pay deal. It is unfortunate that the deal was universal across the whole company, because some groups are more over paid than others already. However it has enabled the company to be inflexible with its negotiations, because no one work group can look at another and say we want more because they did.

From the point of view of the staff, the profit we make is meaningless without the operating margin that goes with it. Costs will continue to be driven down until that elusive 10% margin is achieved.

The question is, once we are at that 10% margin, will we start getting some good pay rises? Hmmm.

HZ123 - If you had said "The BA News" I might have believed you.... Mail on Sunday? to me not quite a reliable paper on facts. BA anounces Full year results in May, though shortly before then the newspapers speculate what the profits will be, (give or take £100 million)

GS Alpha Or maybe BA will give us some of the zero cost items that have been talked about? Sorry to sound cynical here, but I'm getting a little fed up working my socks off for not a lot of money while other staff groups rape this company and get a pat on the back while doing so. I'm turning into an army of One.

... And there is still £300m to be cut in terms of operating costs...

How does this impact on the debt position? Not being a financial whizz, is a portion of the stated profit used to reduce debt, or is debt addressed before profit? And what is the current debt figure...still in billions?

These are operating profits wich would be after financing of the debt. Debt is around 3.5billion sterling. Much better than it was but still one heck of a lot of debt.

Sounds to me like someone, somewhere along the line, has misunderstood some of the stuff presented to investors at last Thursday's Investor Day (10 March 2005). What appears to be the accompanying slideshow can be downloaded from here (free registration).