British Airways will lose a lot more than customers for failing to respect their cancellation rights

For years to come, the great British Airways pilots’ strike of 2019 will constitute a case study of how a celebrated brand could upset so many customers.

The dispute is hardly of BA’s making. To their credit, British Airways and its main unions began the latest round of pay negotiations in a spirit of progress.

For the first time, the Unite union (representing cabin crew), the GMB (representing ground-based staff) and Balpa (the British Airline Pilots’ Association) all sat down together with BA to hammer out a pay deal.

British Airways has been doing very well, financially speaking, which is why it has offered an inflation-beating rise of 11.5 per cent over three years. Two of the unions ratified the deal but the pilots are holding out for more, asking: “Who has done more than us to help BA become prodigiously profitable?”

While junior pilots collect a fraction of the £167,000 annual salary that the airline says long-serving captains earn, British Airways is indisputably in the premier pay league for flight crew.

BA also knows that if it gives an inch, the other unions – representing 90 per cent of staff – will instantly demand that their signed and sealed deals are revisited. So the airline has little room for manoeuvre, and is prepared to sustain a strike rather than be seen to cave in.

A stoppage has been on the cards since 22 July, when the overwhelming majority of pilots – 93 per cent – voted to walk out in order to secure a better deal.

Balpa chose to rain on BA’s centenary parade, calling the strike on the eve of the airline’s 100th birthday weekend.

For the quarter-million people booked to fly with BA on 9 and 10 September, it is annoying to be caught up in a dispute between a wealthy company and some of its best-paid employees.

However, the vast majority of the passengers should be able to fly on the original date of travel. The European air passengers’ rights rules insist BA books them on other carriers.

Airlines such as easyJet, Norwegian and Virgin Atlantic will collectively reap millions from flying BA’s passengers – and perhaps collect new customers who are impressed by their service.

Accordingly, the mass-mailing following the calling of strike dates should have reassured BA passengers the airline would do everything possible to find them seats on other carriers. But instead passengers were warned it was likely “you will not be able to travel”, with the options of a refund or rebooking on a later British Airways flight at the forefront.

The unfortunate assertion triggered understandable panic, with passengers spending hundreds or thousands of pounds to book replacements. Many of them then discovered that, as a result of another BA IT fiasco, their flights had not actually been cancelled.

British Airways was already anticipating losses of many tens of millions of pounds from the strike. Making good the damage from the botched messaging will add millions more, as will the claims from passengers who ended up buying alternative flights for fear that BA might not arrange them.

These charges still represent small change for an airline that extracts a fortune from its holding of the majority of slots at Heathrow.

But aviation is an industry in which brand and customer relations are critical. British Airways has failed in many cases to help its strike-hit passengers as they have the right to expect. BA may be counting the cost for years to come.