While there is no winner in the 7 days of strikes faced by British Airways and its customers, you can still count who lost how much, and we can find out who was the biggest loser.

BA Strike

In terms of hard cold cash, British Airways says it lost 7 million pounds a day during the 3-day March 20-22 strike, and another 5.5 million pounds per day during the 4-day March 27-30 strike.

Add that up, and it comes to 43 million pounds. But there’s more. BA tried hard to lessen the percieved impact by keeping a majority of their planes in the air, at a heavy cost. 

They flew ghost flights with no crew or passengers, which boosted the number of planes up in the air. BA further chartered planes and crew from competitors – 25 during the first strike and 11 during the second one. 

The airline has also been accused of running the world’s most expensive airline in the world during the strike, by asking pilots with £120,000 salaries to do the work of the cabin crew who get paid £15,000 a year.

Add all this up, and according to a Citi broker, the total strike impact is to the tune of 72 million pounds – consisting of 82 million pounds in lost revenue and 12 million pounds in additional costs, offset by 22 million pounds in operating cost reductions.

Match this 72 million pound tab for BA against Unite’s tab – £30 per day per worker, with 11,500 cabin crew on strike. Works out to around 350,000 pounds in lost wages per day, or 2.45 million pounds for the 7 days of strikes. Even this is going to be softened by a £700,000 hardship fund which Unite is collecting to help keep the strike going.

The striking workers will be back at work tomorrow, and BA has not punished them in any meaningful way. But for BA, the pain continues. Passengers leery of Unite’s threat for another April 14 strike are likely to steer clear of BA all the way from now until April 14 and afterwards – if the dispute isn’t resolved.

All said and done, Unite came out of the strike with no significant damage, and retained their ability and determination to strike again.

There’s a lot more at stake for BA now, including losing market share to other airlines who are making use of the strike in their ads to lure BA customers.

In terms of hard cash, BA lost heavily – more than the £60 million a year they were trying to save, which was the cause of the strike. In terms of their position before and after the strike, BA now looks to be in a bigger hole, so the loser in this 7-day fight is unquestionably British Airways.

Photo by itf