Not just the proles getting the heave-ho as British Airways races to save millions More details have surfaced about the British Airways job axe hovering above the app delivery team, with project managers and business analysts - not just techies - also at risk of redundancy. As revealed by El Reg yesterday, BA warned 200 of 424 people in its software unit they could lose their job by December as part of cost …
They seem to be cutting back in the aircraft too, as anybody who has flown in Club Europe recently will be able to tell you. Not only have they cut back on the space between the customer and the seat in front, the seat itself is narrower now too.
So basically people are paying a premium for an economy seat with a slightly nicer meal. Hardly worth it really, especially if they're making more of a profit now than a year ago yet have chosen to fleece both their own customers and employees.
I have fond memories of that: having fun being shuttled around the airport on those electric buggies with the handful of other kids also travelling.
And when we still had to travel from Gatwick in the days before most of the flights were moved to Heathrow they even had a small lounge for the kids to wait in together. It was behind the last departures desk at the end of the departures hall if memory serves. They had a number of videos with some of them being Star Trek, so I was always quite happy to wait there.
Jobs that aren't easily understood by management and are simply just people "tapping at a keyboard". If they never interact with the "business" then management logic dictates that surely this job can be done anywhere. And will without doubt usually end up in India at half the price. (And a 10th of the quality, but it's cheaper so they just see the money saved)
But this is actually where the skills gap is. It's not that technical people aren't available (I.e. there isn't a shortage of workers) it's just management have a "skills understanding" gap and judge it by the only thing they do understand, cost. And they just think Tech's are overpaid, cos tapping at a keyboard isn't that hard surely, so why pay so much.
It's all fucked up, but that's uk management for you. Ruining businesses one promotion at a time.
The solution is simple: replace all the PHBs with computers...
outsourcing important, core activities is always stupid
That's true. But for BA, the core activity is not writing or maintaining software, it is getting people to pay to sit on an aircraft for the purposes of travel. IT might be essential, but so are many other business activities that are not core activity. Even aircraft ownership or maintenance fall into that category.
BA have always obsessed about offshoring, going back at least as far as 1996 when they established WNS as a way of dodging European payroll costs. And that's what scumbags like BA and other users of outsourcing are doing: They want access to high value European and US markets, they want the protection of (in particular) the English courts, they want access to London capital markets, they want to pedal their malignant influence with UK and European politicians. But given a choice they only want to employ people who aren't paid European rates, who don't have Western levels of employment protection and workers rights, and where BA don't have to pay employer's payroll taxes, statutory pension contributions, or incur inconvenient health and safety obligations etc.
British Airways: Exporting jobs since 1996.
They started outsourcing aircraft maintenance (ie the engineers working on the airframes and engines) years ago - and keeping the expensive metal-and-plastic tubes full of self-loading cargo in the air is pretty much a core activity for an airline.
So the fact that they are now getting rid of IT staff is not really that surprising - except for how long it has taken them to get to it. If they don't want to have their own staff to keep their most expensive assets working properly, what hope for anyone else?
Mind you, the "black hand gang" always used to get shafted anyway - care to guess who got the least staff benefits like free... well, reduced-cost travel and were first to be offloaded if a more senior manager (or supervisor, or secretary, or trolley dolly, or Head Office toilet cleaner) came along? (what can I say, I was a fitter before Mortis became a Rigger...)
Have you seen their booking system?
A sample link, suitably amended to avoid any issues:
http://ba.com/mmb/1?echannel=direct&bookingRef=[removed]&lastname=[removed]&emailType=&elanguage=en&elink=MB&type=click
All you need is the booking reference and last name and you have complete access to the booking. There is no need to log in or verify your identity to view the booking (despite them already having the infrastructure to deal with user accounts thanks to the like of the executive club).
Thats the same as most other airlines. In aviation, there are two major reservation systems (SABRE and Amadeus), which the majority of airlines use. The airlines websites are just a front end for these reservation systems. BA uses Amadeus. You can go to any airline that uses Amadeus, and often you can look up and modify your BA reservation through their site. Likewise you can pop into the local travel agents, and they can also pull up and modify your reservation. Its a hangover from the olden days when travel agencies and call centres were the only way to book.
Personally, I prefer it to creating a damn login for every airline you fly with. Just keep your booking reference to yourself, and there's no issue :)
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