Can we all stop flying BA?

[AppleBottomJeans]

Whenever there’s an airline strike it seems to be BA staff. The most recent of which seems greedy. Can we all just choose different airlines and let the airline that was in decades gone by a British standard carrier sink?

Qatar Airways treat their crew badly. Crew have to ask permission to marry and until recently were sacked if they got pregnant. Now they get unpaid maternity leave. How generous.

Ryanair are a terrible employer.

Singapore make female crew retire at 40. They are allowed back after having a child only if they still fit in their uniforms.

If you want to stop flying BA that's fine but you can't expect others to do so. Maybe there's no alternative for many people.
Maybe people prefer them to Ryanair or Easyjet.
You take the risk with any airline that a strike could happen when you've booked to fly. Ryanair staff are also striking at the moment.

I already boycott them due to them providing fuck all service to anywhere I want to go from the six airports within an hour or so of my house, so I wouldn't use them anyway while Id need to travel to the other end of the country to get on one of their planes.

Strikes should be illegal - WTF?

Let’s go back to sending children up chimneys, sacking women for being pregnant (okay that still happens even though it’s illegal), no sick pay or holiday pay.

www.pcs.org.uk/what-have-the-unions-ever-done-for-us

@Basketofkittens there are laws to protect us against all of those things. No need for strikes. As I say, most of the population can't strike anyway!

I was due to fly with SAS in May but the pilots were on strike, so had to travel 200 miles to Gatwick and get on an EasyJet flight. No airline is going to be guaranteed strike free. I’m flying BA next month but only because I’m flying back to the U.K. with someone on the same flight. Else I’d be on easyJet, which is better service and cheaper than BA.

BA pilots took a pay cut 5 years ago and were promised this would be reversed when the airline returned to profitability. Now IAG is profitable and they've been offered a paltry pay increase that only just takes them back to their previous position.

On top of that, layovers have been shortened, allowances cut and other benefits reduced. I'm not a fan of strikes generally but this is justified.

Thanks for the info about rerouting. Certainly wasn’t mentioned on the message from BA. I will look in to it.
My holiday plans are very important to me as it goes, for reasons that are none of your business and irrelevant to my point.
I don’t agree with striking. Don’t like where you work or the rules of that company, find a different job.

We stopped flying long haul with them 6 years ago after experiencing consistently crap customer service. Unfortunately they are our only option flying to LHR from our local airport. I was so pissed off at them after the last long haul I used most of my avios points on cases of Malbec .

I have an BA Amex so I'll carry on flying with them

If it was possible to boycott airlines then Ryanair wouldn't exist.

Never again! Until the next time...

Despite travelling 3/4 time per year for the last 35 years, I've never yet flown with BA. They're basically a London airline that have very limited services from Manchester, so I've always found cheaper/easier alternatives. I'd not notice if they went out of business. Just another London-Centric business that's pretty irrelevant to large parts of the UK which is disgraceful for a so-called "national" carrier.

I used to work for a small airline which BA bought cause was profitable within three years they’d sold it for £1.

BA and old flag carrier economics doesn’t work with modern flying.

I’d tend to avoid BA so YANBU

BA are one of only two airlines that fly direct to DH’s homeland. We live in SE London, and BA fly out of Gatwick, whereas the other airline fly out of Luton. So we don’t have much choice but to use them if we want to see his family.

I’m very sorry that people's travel plans are at risk, but I support the BA strike. I want happy, well-treated pilots in control of the plane I’m on. It seems to me BA have had many opportunities to stop things going this far.

I’m far more ducked off with their appalling short-haul food options.

Go EasyJet!

Those pilots are being greedy!! They took a pay cut when BA were struggling. Now they aren’t. They just want what was promised to them.

Not on your life!

Love the seats, the staff, the general more civilised feeling over easyJet etc (I’ll fly them too if the price is right!)

But no - I like BA and absolutely will continue to fly with them

DFOD HTH

@coffeeforone How do you think those laws happened? People went on strike for us to have them.

They took a pay cut when BA were struggling. Now they aren’t. They just want what was promised to them.

^This. They took pay cuts in bad times, and were told they'd be correspondingly rewarded in good times. Now the good times are here, and the senior management are awarding themselves obscene bonuses and seem to have forgotten their promise.

Flying is not a right. It is an extraordinary privilege and a miracle of technology. People forget this because they can rocket through 30,000 feet of air in a pressurised metal tube at 400mph with drinks and entertainment laid on to the Algarve for 40 quid.

Pilots are worth their weight in gold and they should be paid as such. When you fly your life is literally in their hands. Flying is inherently dangerous, because it's not a situation we can naturally survive without significant support. Sure, most flights pass without incident, but it's the ones when things go wrong that you need a good pilot at the helm. Take that crash landing in Russia recently. If the pilot had made one wrong move then you could be looking at a 100% casualty rate instead of a 100% survival rate.

Personally I'd pay the pilots whatever they damn well asked for.

coffeeforone - the unions fought for changes in employment law. Do you think that the Tory government and CEOs would pay leave if they didn’t have to? They do not give a flying flip about worker’s rights.

Support the workers!

So utterly depressing to read posters on here saying that striking ‘should be illegal’ and that ‘if you don’t agree with your employer then find a new job’. Unions have given us most of the employment rights we take for granted - and with Brexit looming we can’t rely on the EU to protect us. Do you really trust businesses to put employees before profits? No wonder we are hurtling towards the no deal precipice led by a bunch of low-regulation, screw the worker multimillionaires.

And if your workplace doesn’t have union representation you should be fighting for it, not criticising the actions of those who do. Yes striking is inconvenient, but that’s the whole point; if you remove employees’ right to strike then you remove any real leverage for change.

Have never flown BA in 20 years due to terrible service.

Am now an ABBA traveler when I have to fly I.e. I vote with my money but if pilots decide to strike, that is their right and I can’t argue with that