How times change.   It was not so along ago that British Airways was seen as a world leading airline, proudly proclaiming itself to be the “world’s favourite airline”, but now it faces what is probably its biggest challenge ever, with cabin crew voting yesterday to strike for twelve days over Christmas and New Year, from just after midnight on Tuesday, December 22, until Saturday, January 2.

This period is arguably any airline’s busiest period, with any airline that faces a strike over the massive Christmas travel period, also facing financial, operational and reputational ruin.

The choice of Christmas by the BA cabin crew is clearly because they believe it will have most effect, but it begs the question of BA’s cabin crew, who have been cosseted with high pay and legacy terms and conditions for decades, do they really want to see their jobs exist in the future and in fact, whether they have considered if the airline will even exist when they return to work on January 2.

There are very strong parallels between the terms and conditions other legacy airlines still provide to their staff, including cabin crew, with arguably some of the strongest parallels being with Qantas cabin crew, with both BA, and Qantas, arguably quite justifiably trying to reduce costs to survive.

It never ceases to amaze me why people like BA cabin crew do not get it – times have changed – the world has moved on - the days of making hay at someone else’s expense are over! 

It is time to be paid a fair rate for a fair days work and while they espouse their safety role as critical, in addition to serving food and drinks, their safety role is no different to other cabin crew on other contemporary airlines that are paid hugely less than BA or for that matter QF cabin crew.

You feel like grabbing them all by the shoulders and shouting “wake up and smell the coffee”!!!

The 12-day strike over the Christmas and New Year holidays will ground planes and disrupt travel for many thousands during what is normally one of the most profitable periods for BA, with the very expensive decision yet to be made by BA that they will allow their tickets to be used by other carriers – with as you would imagine, most other carriers are already full over this period.

BA has said that schedules for the period in question are being reworked and that customers can rebook for a later date, but that does not help passengers going somewhere especially for Christmas or New Year, with plans now dashed by the BA cabin crew.

Also, while BA must refund fares for cancelled flights, it is reported that only passengers with strike insurance who booked before the ballot was announced on November 2 will be able to recover the costs of making new transport arrangements, which are unlikely to succeed due to the heavy Christmas and New Year travel period.

It is also amazing that so many BA cabin crew had their heads in the sand, with 80% of the more than 12,500 workers voting by 92% to support strike action.

Just in case you were wondering, the reason cabin crews are going to strike is simple – all BA has done is cut cabin crew levels last month, on BA 747’s from 15 to 14, when talks with unions failed to produce a compromise, with the carrier desperately seeking to trim costs as a result of the effect of the global economic crisis slashing air travel, creating a £217million – that’s $A385m loss for the six months ending September 30, 2009.

Analysts think that this could be the nail in the coffin for BA, which recently announced a last ditch rescue merger with Spanish airline Iberia, with the strike estimated to lose BA more than £20 million that’s $A36m, so over the 12 days or so of the strike, that’s a horrendous £240m or $A432m, that’s more than the loss they reported for the six months of trading to September.

One of the biggest impacts on BA, even if it survives the massive losses the strike will generate, will the immense and probably irreparable damage to its already tarnished reputation, with customers affected unlikely to fly with BA ever again!   Ask yourself this question - would you book to fly BA at moment any time into the future, with strikes of this nature likely to trash your travel plans?  I don’t think so!

Perhaps, it could be said that BA could have handled the situation and negotiations with cabin crew better, but they say that the strike is a “huge overreaction to the modest changes”.  Irrespective though, this is very serious stuff and it is frightening that 12,500 BA workers cannot see the risk they are taking.

Analysts say that cutthroat, cost cutting BA boss Willie Walsh is also considered unlikely to back down on this issue because the airline has to reduce costs or there will be no airline!

So, what about Qantas?  Could this happen here?

Well, there are interesting parallels between Willie Walsh and QF CEO Alan Joyce, not least of all in their both being Irish, but also both coming from the low cost airline operation model. 

Alan Joyce has also embarked on a very ambitious cost cutting programme, but perhaps his discussion with unions have been handled better than Mr Walsh’s at BA, as there are few signs currently of QF being faced with a similar massive strike as at BA.  In addition, QF’s financial position is nothing like as precarious as BA’s.

Perhaps, it might be that QF’s staff can see the writing on the wall more clearly that their legacy airline colleagues in the UK – maybe its all that rain in the UK, blinding their pommie colleagues vision!

At the end of the day it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few days and if the strike goes ahead, how BA will emerge, if at all.

An Industry Insider report by John Alwyn-Jones, e-Travel Blackboard correspondent.