British Airways may return to Gatwick as pilots vote on an improved offer

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• Gary Saggat says:

  4 Oct4 October 08:46

  BA have probably at last realised that in order to function, they have to appreciate their staff and offer their Customers value for money. Since the days of Lord King and Lord Marshall, who pulled BA out of the gutter and placed them at the top of their game, things have slowly changed back. The stewardship of Mr Walsh marked the wrecking of “The world’s favourite airline” and since then poor decision making based solely on profitability rather than increasing Customer satisfaction and Customer base has been the focus. Changes have lasted weeks before reverting back; poor to no fresh ideas have marked recent years of mediocrity at best, leaving Cabin Crew to try to please with cheap wines and dirty planes. It is an abomination and needs dramatic investment in staff and Customers. It needs proper leadership, fresh ideas and the appearance, at least, of value for money.
  Trying to shift 800,000 Avios and 3 BA AmEx 241 vouchers in F is virtually impossible. Maybe I dont want to waste Avios on Club Europe or on a vintage 777 out of LGW in J…………but then at the moment, I have very few options. I hope that when the sleepy ol’ Joe eventually gets to announcing the opening of the USA, some more seats and routes may be released to allow years of loyalty to be used to re-establish a loyal Customer base by allowing us to use our Avios as we wish and not as BA wish.
  Here endeth……..

  • Cambridge Dad says:

    4 Oct4 October 08:55

    You could always turn the 800K Avios into £6400 spending money through Nectar?

    I’ve been shopping on old Avios through Ebay (@0.8p / point) this year as I think Avios devaluation is inevitable.

    Just have to hide the Nectar cards carefully and not carry them around in my wallet as they are effectively cash.

    • ChrisC says:

      4 Oct4 October 08:59

      Max 50k conversion a month though.

      • Cambridge Dad says:

        4 Oct4 October 09:03

        Plus there’s a nasty 1 year points expiry rule, easily sorted by buying a litre of milk at Sainsbury’s – but also easily forgotten.

    • Andy says:

      4 Oct4 October 11:09

      That’s what I’m slowly doing too…

      Best value Avios redemptions I’ve had were on internal flights in Oz (flew CX to get there), from the UK it often seems cheaper to buy a ticket than reedem Avios

  • Frankie says:

    4 Oct4 October 09:45

    BA four hour economy flight from Mykonos to Heathrow yesterday evening. I’d not pre ordered anything as missed the 24 hour window. No ice from the outset. The one type of rather horrible red wine ran out. The wine was £6 a quarter bottle. No food on the menu apart from crisps and Haribo. The one ‘meal option’, was a tub of couscous. I think they had only one peppermint tea teabag as I saw someone order one and then noticed the Speedbird cafe was out of stock. Same for the tapas box. Tonic also ran out of stock as did Harrogate still water. My flight from Ibiza in July with EasyJet had rather nice wine quarter bottles selling for £8 for two. A similar deal for G&Ts. Tasty ham and cheese toasties and mini pizzas plus other meal deals. I was able to buy two litres of Tanqueray to take home for £30, and that was just a two hour flight.

    • Richie says:

      4 Oct4 October 10:20

      easyJet have got BoB down to an art. Vueling are doing pretty well. BA just needs to copy.

    • Paul says:

      4 Oct4 October 11:27

      In economy out of overpriced Mykonos. Were you in the last row? 🙂

      I paid for Club Avios out of Santorini only because the constant coffee and brandy meant I wouldn’t have to wear a mask for 4 hours. The idea any one pays 700 plus Euro one way for the crap they dish out is staggering, but it was packed with 12 rows of club

• Mikeact says:

  4 Oct4 October 08:54

  You could of course, very easily use your 800k Avios on other partners..long haul..easy.

• Dave says:

  4 Oct4 October 09:14

  The introduction of “Mixed Fleet” had zero to do with the pandemic. Mixed fleet was set up after the 2010 cabin crew strikes and was already well established come 2020. Lapse reporting as always when airlines are concerned.

  • Rhys says:

    4 Oct4 October 09:45

    Read it again 🙂

• Mr James Shaw says:

  4 Oct4 October 09:34

  I don’t see how it matters as to who climbed down as long as the staff are looked after by the company, and customers are looked after by the staff, At the end of day the last couple of years have been been something no one or no company has ever had to deal with before. Going forward i feel British Airways is the best airline in the world by far and i would like to see the grow from strength to strength. But in doing that sometimes hard choices have to be made and someone will always end up on the wrong side of the deal. Personally i thing Gatwick has had its day it used to be an Ok airport before the American bought it out now its just hell unorganised and i will never fly from there again. I would like to see BA starting to look at maybe flying from Stansted or Southend so us in essex and herts area dont have to go all the way to gatwick or heathrow.

  • Richie says:

    4 Oct4 October 10:12

    Gatwick’s majority shareholder is Vinci who are headquartered in Paris.
    The south terminal BA check-in areas and lounges are good.
    BACF had year round weekend flights from Stansted for a number of years, but they didn’t seem to be profitable. Crossrail has stations at Liverpool Street so going all the way to heathrow from essex should be easier.

• A says:

  4 Oct4 October 10:01

  A lot of factually incorrect statements in the article which only spins the side BA wants to spin. Not a balanced article.

  • Rhys says:

    4 Oct4 October 10:03

    BA hasn’t made any public statements. The entire article is based on the BALPA letter!

  • ChrisC says:

    4 Oct4 October 10:09

    So what are the incorrect statements?

    • Mikeact says:

      4 Oct4 October 10:48

      Interesting to see if we get a reply….probably not.

    • Nigel says:

      5 Oct5 October 19:53

      “One of our BA insiders says in the comments below that BALPA went begging to the airline after BA showed it was serious about withdrawal by putting through the flight changes last week. The contract changes are, he says, purely cosmetic and just a way for the union to save face. There is a precedent for this – BALPA pulled a planned strike in 2019 when the airline effectively said to it ‘go on then, strike, but we promise you won’t get what you want’.”

      So not quite all from the Balpa letter.

      BALPA did not go begging to BA. There was a required meeting to discuss the divestiture of the slots – it’s in the pilot’s MOA. At that meeting an opportunity arose to discuss the matter further, most likely because the CEO had gotten himself personally involved for the first time after the previous round of talks were delegated.

      The improvements to the offer aren’t brillianr, but there are improvements to both pay and scheduling that will cost BA more than the initial offer.

      As for the strike, on actual strike days the pilots grounded the airline and had an almost 100% no-show rate. The problem was infighting among the BACC and the General Secretary. I think we can all agree Brian Strutton was worse than useless. But nor was that what BA said anyway – Cruz was told all along by his subordinates that pilots wouldn’t strike, afterall they hadn’t in 40+ years. The problem was the infighting within the BACC that opted for just 3 days in 2 weeks and then after an internal power struggle, those with cold feet won out.

      I know sensationalism often wins out in journalism rather than facts but this will most likely end up as something that is mutually beneficial, not a victor or loser or one team/side winning out.

      • Rob says:

        5 Oct5 October 20:15

        I have no axe to grind either way, but if you say yourself as a pilot that “The improvements to the offer aren’t brilliant, but there are improvements to both pay and scheduling that will cost BA more than the initial offer.” then it is clearly a face-saving cave in.

        BALPA put out a press release saying that pilots would now never agree to any deal, even the original BA deal, because they no longer trusted BA. The impression was that nothing short of full parity with Heathrow crew would do.

        If it’s a bad deal, vote it down. easyJet can buy the slots and your colleagues can get jobs with them for more money than they will get from BA under this structure – as well as not encouraging the race to the bottom. By accepting a deal which leaves BA pilots worse off than easyJet pilots then it is clearly NOT mutually beneficial and just another nail in the coffin of the job being a well paid career.

        You must agree it is a joke that when Rhys flies off to Spain or whatever to do a hotel review for me, he is being paid 50% more than the First Officer, if not the pilot.

• JohnT says:

  4 Oct4 October 10:18

  Only just accepted the switch our Naples flights for April from LGW to LHR! So really hope they swap back as a pain for us on south coast. Would have already cancelled & rebooked with EasyJet if it hadn’t been a redemption 241 (cashing in an expiring voucher).

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    4 Oct4 October 20:49

    Never accept a cancellation unless you definitely want what is offered. Not accepting the cancellation gives you the flexibility to move it or refund it in the future

• Richie says:

  4 Oct4 October 17:39

  Received a Gatwick SH cancellation today, also not being moved to LHR, so there doesn’t seem to be a pause in outright cancellations.

• tony says:

  5 Oct5 October 06:44

  I flew on BA yesterday for the second time in as many weeks. Post-pandemic, it seems the contempt with which they treat their staff AND passengers has sunk to a new low and is now quite simply unbelievable. If you strip it back, aside from the convenience, there’s really nothing to merit using them as an airline at all.

  • ctr says:

    5 Oct5 October 09:51

    Elaborate please…

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