Twelve days of Christmas to be far from festive for BA

LONDON BRIEFING:IF THE public were asked to come up with a new slogan for British Airways for the next decade, the winning entry would almost certainly be "the World's Least Favourite Airline", writes FIONA WALSH

The same line would probably come top in a staff competition too, certainly among the national flag carrier’s 12,000 or so cabin crew staff.

On Monday, in the genteel surroundings of Sandown racecourse in Surrey, the battle lines were drawn for what has already been dubbed the industrial dispute of the decade.

As BA’s cabin crew voted overwhelmingly in favour of an unprecedented 12-day walkout over Christmas and the new year, the festive travel plans of up to one million passengers collapsed into chaos. BA has called in the lawyers in an attempt to have the strike, due to start next Tuesday, ruled illegal, but even at this early stage in the hostilities it is clear that neither side can win.

Passengers have reacted with fury against the heartless flight staff. Already the newspapers and TV news programmes are full of tales of distraught families who will now be apart at Christmas, of disappointed honeymooners and holidaymakers, even groups of pilgrims who had hoped to travel to Lourdes. In short, a reputational disaster of huge proportions, both for the unions and for the battered BA brand.

Shares in the financially strapped carrier slid 2 per cent as analysts calculated the likely cost of the dispute, with estimates ranging from £10 million (€11.2 million) to £30 million a day. All this comes amid the worst downturn in decades in the aviation industry: BA racked up a record loss of £401 million in the year to last March and was already on course to top that with losses of up to £700 million for the current financial year.

In a double blow on Monday, BA revealed that its pension deficit had ballooned to £3.7 billion, making it one of the biggest in the private sector and adding extra urgency to the costcutting moves.

Writing in the Daily Mailon Monday, BA chief executive Willie Walsh described the planned walkout as a return to 1970s trade unionism. He accused the cabin crew union, Unite, of refusing to acknowledge what is going on around it: "Like King Canute, it sits by the water's edge shouting at the waves of recession and competition to go back."

Though the union might be bent on self-destruction, “I will not allow British Airways to be pulled under too,” he vowed.

Strong words from the combative Walsh, who appears determined not to back down over the implementation of staffing reductions on flights, changes at the heart of the union’s dispute with the company. Walsh has so far avoided being cast in the role of Scrooge in this affair, although his uncompromising stance will doubtless come under closer scrutiny as the Christmas travel chaos looms.

For now, it is the union and its members who are being publicly demonised. BA employees have long been known to enjoy some of the best pay and perks in the airline industry, including generous stopovers in luxury hotels, a legacy of the strength of the unions and weakness of the management in the early 1980s.

Even so, there has been widespread astonishment this week at just how lucratively BA staff are rewarded. Cabin service directors on longhaul BA flights are paid £56,000 a year and £52,000 on short haul. More junior cabin staff earn £35,000 and £26,000 respectively – double the salaries earned by their peers at rival Virgin Atlantic. As Walsh said in the Daily Mail, these are salaries many employees in other walks of life can only dream about.

There are some winners. The threatened strike has brought an early Christmas gift to BA’s rivals as desperate customers scramble to make alternative travel plans. Their bookings have soared – as have fares – and there is likely to be another scramble once BA announces full details of flight cancellations. At the moment, the carrier says it is working on contingency plans.

It is still possible the strike may be averted. But for many travellers the damage has been done and some may never return to BA. In the industry, they’re calling it the “ABBA” effect: Anything But BA.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London