BAeuro

I think every route will be scrutinised and then they’ll decide if it comes back, while every cost will also have to be justified. They won’t cut all investment though as they need to remain competitive and secure premium customers.

I guess there will be some similar responses that were used for 9/11 and 2008 financial crisis.

As for the drop in business travellers, yes it could happen but even if it does it’s not the end for BA. There will still be leisure passengers, VFR, high business deals and cargo. So maybe we will just see less premium heavy aircraft.

JessicaB

Gosh, given how they have pared back the service recently, I dread to think what you mean by a "functional one rather than a bells and whistles carrier". Try flying on the bucket-and-spade long-haul 777's from Gatwick, not a bell nor a whistle to be seen.

I think the days of cheap flying will be over in any case. Far fewer flights will operate, and those that do will charge much higher fares, that's my prediction. At least Greta will be happy.

JessicaB

I find it amazing that it has all worked so well, even though everyone is using it all the time. That would definitely not have been the case a few years ago. Skype in particular has come on leaps and bounds in terms of reliability from its earlier days. And yes I agree, people will have adapted to new working patterns and I am sure that many companies will travel a lot less post Covid.

JessicaB

The issue is that a lot of the holiday routes are transporting people to all-inclusive hotels in hot countries and there is a whole question-mark over whether you can do all-inclusive and socially distance. Buffets are lethal for virus spread for example, so all food would have to be served and trying to keep everyone 2M away from each other would be a big issue. I know there are flights planned to Cancun and Barbados at the end of May but I suspect this may prove a lot more of a problem than is currently imagined.

let_BAegones_be

How soon will this happen?
Weeks, months?

skipness1E

WAS made in having high volumes of premium seats. That market just changed overnight. No one, not one person can say with any confidence to what degree it will return and to when.

dddc

People adapt when they have to. I had this conversation with my senior board today. We had sent out remote Teams (the Skype for Businesses replacement) training class invites in March and April. The business was slow in the uptake of them until we had to work from home. A bit like a previous place I worked where the sales teams only learnt how to use a new system when their commission and bonuses depended on it. Today however I'm trying to find new ways of supporting the areas I look after and Teams channels is going to fit the bill.

However there will still be a need for me to travel to visit these countries because I'll be able to do in a day or two what would take longer over the phone/Teams etc. With such a dramatic reduction in staff and therefore flights, prices are likely to rise so we're going to end up in a circle of it's too expensive to fly to a meeting so lets to it all remotely etc. I'm hoping BA aren't looking at that 12000 as the worse case scenario figure and opting to reduce headcount by that, especially if it doesn't give them any room to grow if and hopefully when conditions improve.

bmibaby737

i agree with you. I know it’s hard but I don’t like the speculating at times like this for the sake of the staff.

orbitmic

well I’m my case (and that of quite a few colleagues I’ve discussed it with), the more remote meetings I’m doing, the more vibrantly I’m convinced that face to face interaction achieves very different/far superior results.

subject2load

I don’t for a moment doubt what you say orbitmic.

Some (many ?) businesses may very well find themselves - perhaps reluctantly - adopting a different view. For sure, they will be anxious to recoup as much as feasible of any revenues / profits lost during the pandemic. But there will, equally, be a greater focus on all discretionary spend ; and of course international travel is often one of the first costs to be cut in difficult times - even when that might be seen as counter-productive.

cjb666

Sadly I agree with this. I deal with people yelling this is the new normal, pivot to digital and if you aren't onboard you are obsolete. I am not bought into every interaction needs to be a digital interaction but at the same time I think things have changed.

cjb666

Good for you. I don't think many of the 12,000 losing their jobs today will be ramming First and Club World in the future.

SKRan

I’m not surprised that cuts are made at the parts of business where labour cost is the highest.

orbitmic

Oh don't take me wrong I fully agree with you. I guess what I wanted to point out was that having been in a sector which resorted to remoteness very early in the crisis, in the first couple of weeks, it was interesting to see people's enthusiasm with the new model and - quite literally - hoping that this would become the new norm. Then progressively, colleagues' enthusiasm vanished quite a bit. People realised that virtual conversations, in addition to the odd technical issue (why is it always when someone says something critical that they freeze on your screen, and you don't want to ask them to repeat as all other 15 people in the virtual room seemed to hear him/her) further increase existing problematic conversation patterns (some people monopolising the floor whilst others are silent, people following up with emails to either ask something that was discussed at length in the meeting or question an agreement that was painfully reached), and their creativity and efficiency is arguably less and the tiredness more (a one hour meeting is usually survivable, a 1 hour virtual meeting often drains me).

So like you, I have no doubt that many companies will look at the immediate savings that can be achieved from doing more virtual and less travel (and disguise it as a green initiative for good measure). My hunch, however, is that this will have an impact on quality/productivity of such meetings, and that quite possibly, within 5 or 7 years, the few outliers which will resist that tendency might well be gaining an advantage in terms of quality and reputation for care and rigour over the virtual mainstream and get some of the high value contracts. That is only my guess and may well be wrong, but by that time, I expect a lot of people to use some variation of the words: "well, nothing really replaces meeting clients/partners/teams face to face".

crazy8534

2 weeks ago I would have agreed with this, but whether it is because of increasing familiarity, a creeping realisation that we really aren't going back to normal any time soon, or the fact that I have now started using much better software (e.g. microsoft teams) for this, I am inclined to say that virtual meetings are probably going to be a much more prevalent way of doing business in the future than in the past. Although there will obviously still be demand for business travel, probably just significantly less than before.

I agree with the staff being a real asset to BA's business but, sadly, I don't think this is realistic. What with the recent mass job-losses across airlines (Thomas Cook, FlyBe etc.) even before this crisis really got going, and in particular with the difficulties facing the legacy/premium airlines that might really value the type of experienced staff available (e.g. Lufthansa) I think the market for employment for this type of hospitality/travel sector work will be depressed for a long period.