BA’s cabin staff appear to be fighting a losing battle

THE share price says it all. Since the end of last year, shares in strike-hit British Airways have risen in value by nearly a third (see chart). For all the apocalyptic headlines the airline is currently attracting, investors are increasingly confident that BA will win its battle with the cabin staff’s union, Unite, and that when the smoke clears, little if any long-term damage will have been done to its resilient brand.

There are plenty of reasons why Willie Walsh, BA’s combative boss, can look to the future with some confidence. First of all, the notion being peddled in much of the British media that customers who are quite sensibly avoiding BA now will never return is nonsense. The passengers that BA depends on most are those who regularly fly business class across the Atlantic. It is a pretty safe bet that most of them sympathise with the action management is taking to get the airline’s out-of-kilter costs closer to those in the rest of the industry. …