Guest neil in england Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Well, the results are in for the past financial year....and BA have made a profit of 135 million pounds, but this has not been without some major pain in the form of job losses, 10,000 of them and 3000 more to come, and painful decisions to mitigate the disastrous last financial quarter which featured losses of 200 million pounds...there are shortfalls on the company pension scheme, thought to be lessened by the Baghdad bounce on the stockmarket and a full review of the pension status coming within a month or two... The comany has sold off aout 35 B757's to DHL in the last couple of years, replacing them with A320/A319 series aircraft---purchased at rock-bottom prices and expanding this fleet from the original ten aircraft to now in the neighbourhood of 60... There are about 12 757's left, for the time being, with 24 767's also being utilized in a mixture of European shorthaul and occasional transatlantic longhaul...noises about the 767's being sold off to the RAF in the next few years as a replacement for their air refuelling fleet of L1011's and VC-10's... The longhaul fleet continues with 56 747-400's and 45 777's, with the company having tried to sell some of these 747's a couple of years ago, but nobody basically wanting them, so the company has now adopted the stance that they will keep them and run them for the rest of their useful life....no more 777's for now...the only replacement aircraft coming at the moment are the 320/321 series, nothing else mentioned at the moment... The concorde...a tragedy to bring it to rest, but it is not bringing in the revenue to pay it's big bills and with bad publicity from engine shutdowns, etc. the company is unwilling to continue pumping money into this flagship operation...Richard Branson's tiresome, repetitive and noisy protests and posturing make great headlines but the reality is that airbus want to pull it's certificate at the end of the operation in the autumn and concentrate on more pressing matters...as an aside, from financial statement headlines, the closing of the concorde operation will cost in the neighbourhood of 80 million pounds... Strategies must now come into play to address several situations in the future...the constraints of operating from LHR, addressed by terminal 5, which is 4 years away...additional parallel runway at LHR will also be possibly a decade away.... No mention of replacement aircraft for the 767 role, airbus perhaps??? Geographical constraints of crowded LHR again come into play as the A330 cannot fit into the gates of terminal 1 where a 767 easily could...hmmm, must we wait until the more spacious gates of terminal 5, (four years away seems a long time to wait). From a personal point of view, the company is still fantastic to work for, treating the flightcrew very well and encouraging their status as senior operational managers within the company culture and with lots of opportunity on the horizon... I am awaiting my 747-400 Left seat with eager anticipation in the coming months...... BA still have the best business product in the air, but absolutely refuse to rest on their laurels and continually revisit the product to look at improvement here and there...the staff are sometimes fighting an uphill battle with the lack of facility/space at LHR (which is down to the British Airport Authorities) but it's still an impressive professional operation with good attitude overall... we shall see where things go in the next few months... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest neo Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Great update, Neil. Thanks for giving your perspective from 'across the pond.' neo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest YWG Flyer Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 Nice update Neil. Can intra-European 763 flying be replaced with 321s or is that too much of a gap seat-wise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest neil in england Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 well, the gap may be a bit larger than they want but it has actually worked replacing half-full 757s with 319s that are full and flying higher frequency to accommodate the business travellers....our shorthaul lost abou 240 million the year before and lost about 120 million in this past financial year...they want break even within the next couple of years.... the BA.com website is a real winner in making it easy for the customer to figure out how to get the lowest price ticket for any destination....educating the consumer...no more seat sales...cheap tickets available all year round....we can compete with the locosters in some respects, albeit with the high costs of operating from busy ol' LHR and other congested airports within Europe... cheers, Neil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest YWG Flyer Posted May 20, 2003 Share Posted May 20, 2003 What about long-haul 763s? How many are flying with the flat bed F-class in int'l configurations... ie for DTW/MAN-JFK. I suppose those routes would be difficult to find the perfect aircraft replacement if the 763 were replaced with 321s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest neil in england Posted May 21, 2003 Share Posted May 21, 2003 to be honest, I'm not even sure that the 763 features the flat 1st bed, nor does it have the flat business seat...from what I understand.... it still has the cradle seat in business...I suppose the A321 would be workable with flat business seats, whether the company have looked at this stuff, I'm not too sure... cheers, Neil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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