And thats part of the problem really with BA, it has a union which isn't run by normal people but run by dinosaurs of the British Leyland era. quote below from an article in the Times, I really hope BA wont succumb to a similar fate. In my opinion, anyone who goes on strike should have to sign a disclaimer which allows all passengers the right to wee in their shoes on return to work:

British Leyland went bankrupt in 1975 and was nationalised. On paper it must have seemed like a good idea, bringing together 97 different companies to form BL. But in practice the workforce and management at each plant were still fiercely proud of whatever it was they were making.

So, when Morris made the Marina, Austin came up with the Allegro, which meant BL was competing against itself. And it was the same story with Triumph. Remember the Stag? When it was being developed Triumph’s engineers had access to the Rover V8. It was light, frugal and powerful and would have been ideal. But there was no way they’d use “Rover rubbish”, so instead they nailed together two Dolomite engines to create their own V8, which overheated every time it was wet, dry, windy, cold, hot or grey.

So, infighting, lousy design and a factory that was no more suitable for car production than a stable. And to make matters worse the company had been targeted by extremists who were determined to make sure that no car made it onto the road. In his first six months as chairman Michael Edwardes had to deal with 327 different industrial disputes.

It’s easy to understand the motivation for all this unrest and hopelessness. It’s much more fun to stand round a brazier shouting “scab” at anyone in a tie than it is to spend all day bolting Prince of Darkness Lucas components onto a car that wouldn’t have worked anyway.

What’s more, it didn’t matter. Back then, everyone still had a sense that Britain ran the world, that Japanese cars were a joke and that the Germans were a bunch of war-losing .......s. They were all so arrogant, so far removed from the harsh reality of foreign competition, that they refused even to look at the competition.

And anyway Jim Callaghan would simply roll up the following week with another skipful of taxpayers’ cash. Over the years BL has cost the British government £3.5 billion.

Since I was old enough to read newspapers I’ve always perceived the British motor industry to be nothing more than a fountain of woe, waste and doom. A park full of men in donkey jackets raising their hands. A strike with a Birmingham accent.

And there seemed no end to the problem. The factories couldn’t be closed because negotiations would have to include the sheet metal workers, the metal mechanics, the draughtsmen, the technicians and half a dozen unions, including the all powerful TGWU.

On top of that, you have Harris Mann, who designed the TR7 and the Allegro, and Red Robbo, who refused to make either. You have Lord Stokes, who was an invertebrate, and Edwardes, who’s much too small. Then there’s Graham Day, Mrs Thatcher, Jim Callaghan, Tony Benn, Honda, BMW, the Shanghai Automotive group and British Aerospace who, in 1988, took the company off the government’s hands, promising they wouldn’t sell it for five years.

Five years later almost to the day, and having invested virtually nothing, they sold it to BMW for £800m. And what did BMW do? Why, they launched the wilfully old-fashioned 75, proving that they had no idea either. Nobody did. Nobody ever has done. Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been done, so badly, by so many.