Originally Posted by
Raffles
Not huge, as you see from the report BA is not witholding payments at the moment.
Given the size of its fleet BA wins from this. At any time there are full aircraft crews sitting in hotels at Heathrow, in full uniform, ready to go at a few minutes notice in case of delays to incoming aircraft. Imagine that for a job - you spend a full shift, every day, in a hotel in full uniform waiting to go - and you rarely do.
Smaller airlines can't afford to keep fully crewed aircraft sitting around 'just in case'.
BA win at base, but not at outstations, and I think this applies to all larger airlines. Small airlines lose at base and at home, as you say. In a recent experience, we still ended up about 3.5 hours delayed LHR-OSL after the first aircraft had repeated tech problems and we had to go in another aircraft. There isn't that much slack in the aircraft utilisation.
I think sitting around in uniform waiting to go but not going anywhere, sounds remarkably tedious and unpleasant on a regular basis. You can only read Flyertalk and play Angry Birds for so long before you run out of both (I am aware that BA crew get a mix of standby and flying duties, and other duties). Although perhaps some are working on the Next Great British Novel while on standby :-)