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BA axes 1,700 jobs
Wednesday October 7, 2009 - Email this article to a friend
It contemplates a turbulent time ahead as further record losses threaten the company. Quite simply it costs far more to fly the planes than comes in from passenger receipts.What is going on?
Something will have to give and the pessimists say it may be the airline itself.
The airline expects 1,000 cabin crew to take voluntary redundancy and another 3,000 will go part-time.
"Revenues are down so we must reduce costs and restore profitability," the airline optimistically says in a statement. "Thousands of staff have already made contributons to the cost reduction programme."
BA has also said it will press ahead with plans to recruit new staff on different terms and conditions to current employees.
To many analysts this is the crux of the problem as BA's staff costs are far greater than other airlines and the unions are strong.
The move has prompted fears of industrial action by the 14,000 cabin crew who belong to the union, Unite. Any strike would come over winter and may co-incide with Christmas because of the required period of consultation before any action can occur.
Not anymore you won't
We have already reported on several occasions the problems the national carrier is enduring.
Last year it lost just over £400m - the biggest loss since it was privatised back in the late 80's.
Quite how any airline survives at the moment we are not quite sure here at PlanetSKI as it often costs more to get to the airport than to use the multi-million pound building and the hugely expensive aircarft with all the behind the scenes charges such as security, safety and training.
The fact that it can be cheaper to get a flight to Geneva than a mini-cab to the airport just does not stack up.
The low-cost airlines seem to manage it though with their business model.
The biggest change us skiers and snowboarders will notice is the cost BA now levies to take our equipment to the mountains.
Blue sky or storm clouds ahead?It used to pride and market itself on being a skier friendly airline.
We will have to go to Swiss for free transport of our equipment to the mountains, though some of the low cost airlines do short promotional offers to get a bit of PR.
Also you can't get a free sandwich any more as BA has axed them on short haul flights - they weren't very nice anyway in our opinion at PlanetSKI.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
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