The EconomistSeptember 14th 2019 Britain 291O
n a normalMonday morning Termi-
nal 5, Heathrow airport’s busiest, is a
hive of activity. Over 100,000 passengers
arrive or leave for more than 150 destina-
tions. But on September 9th its departure
halls were almost completely abandoned.
The only flights taking off were to Cairo,
Madrid and Tokyo. The reason was a two-
day strike by British Airways (ba) pilots and
their union, the British Airline Pilots’ Asso-
ciation (balpa). The walkout, which
grounded almost 1,700 flights due to carry
at least 280,000 people, was the first ever
pilot strike at ba. balpa threatens
more—on September 27th and then other
dates stretching until January. But far from
showing the growing clout of pilots’ un-
ions, their battle for better pay exposes
their rapidly weakening position.
At first glance, it would seem that ba’s
pilots have little to complain about. In July
they rejected a pay deal which would have
increased their salaries by 11.5% over three
years—more than average pay in Britain is
forecast to rise over the period—and which
would have taken the annual pay of a long-
haul captain to over £200,000 ($248,000).
But balpa says its pilots also want a
share of ba’s profits. During the last reces-
sion, in 2008-09, its members accepted a
2.6% pay cut and saw some extra allow-
ances slashed when times were tough. So
balpanow says its pilots deserve to benefit
from the carrier’s more recent success.
After losing £531m in 2010, baswallowed
Aer Lingus, Iberia and Vueling, and since
2014 the combined group, iag, has mademore profit in absolute terms than any oth-
er European airline group. iag’s announce-
ment in February that it made record pro-
fits of €2.9bn ($3.2bn) last year was a red rag
to balpa’s bulls.
ba’s refusal to budge on pay has puzzled
analysts. balpaclaims the two sides were
just £5m a year apart when the talks col-
lapsed. baclaims the last-minute proposal
balpa put forward to avoid the strikes
would have cost it £50m a year. But even
that looks something of a bargain com-
pared with the cost of the strikes. Alex
Cruz, ba’s chief executive, has admitted
that the cancelled flights will “punish the
brand”. Damian Brewer, an airline analyst
at rbcCapital Markets, estimates that each
day of strikes will cost iag€50m.
bais not the only airline with which
balpais in dispute. Ryanair, Europe’s larg-
est low-cost carrier, is also feeling its pilots’
new-found assertiveness keenly. In 2017 it
was forced to recognise unions for the first
time, after a shortage of pilots had forced it
to cancel 20,000 flights that autumn. And
this summer it has been hit by a long run of
industrial action. Last month its British pi-
lots called five days of strikes, and on Sep-
tember 4th they announced seven more
days of walkouts.
Yet the rapid growth of Europe’s airline
industry, which created the shortage of pi-
lots that unions are trying to exploit, is
coming to an end. In each of the past four
years global passenger numbers grew by
7% or more. But in the first half of 2019 the
rate fell to around 3.5% because of slowing
economic growth and the grounding of
Boeing’s 737 maxplanes, due to safety pro-
blems. Ryanair and Norwegian, a low-cost
rival, have now hired and trained too many
pilots, and in Britain are trying to lay off
hundreds of them. Several European air-
lines have gone bust over the past year, in-
cluding wowAir of Iceland, Flybmi of Brit-
ain and Primera Air of Latvia, leaving lots of
pilots scrambling to find work. Last monthRyanair announced that pilot turnover had
“dwindled to zero”—a clear sign that an
employees’ market had become an em-
ployers’ one.
Unfortunately for passengers, that is
unlikely to bring a swift resolution to ba
and Ryanair’s disputes. balpawants to get
as good a deal as it can for its members be-
fore the glut of pilots gets worse. And Mr
Cruz is worried that if he gives in to the pi-
lots, cabin crew and ground staff could
start making similar demands. With in-
creasingly sluggish demand for air travel
and a possible no-deal Brexit threatening
to dent profits over the next year, he wants
to defend his margins. Passengers should
buckle up for more disruption. 7What lies behind the industrial action
that has grounded British AirwaysPilots’ payAir strikes hit
London
A wing and a prayerA
s the toryleadership election hob-
bled on, the London Evening Standard
hoped that Boris Johnson would prove a
“big-hearted, optimistic, liberal” leader.
They expected that as prime minister he
would reassure millions of socially liberal
voters who backed Remain. Yet in his near-
ly two months in Downing Street, the liber-
al Mr Johnson has been absent. His au-
thoritarian alter-ego has stolen the show
by suspending Parliament, ditching plans
to abandon short prison sentences and de-
livering a speech in front of a phalanx of
uniformed coppers. When he droned on
for so long that one of them fainted, he
didn’t look terribly big-hearted either.
This week the liberal returned—at least
for a day. On September 11th he announced
that foreign students will be allowed to
stay in Britain for two years after their de-
grees while working or looking for a job,
rather than the current four months. It is
the most significant sign yet that Mr John-
son’s government will abandon the hostile
approach to immigration favoured by his
predecessor, Theresa May.
Foreign students could stay for two
years after their studies until 2012, when
Mrs May, then the home secretary, intro-
duced the current limit in an attempt to cut
net migration. Mr Johnson’s government is
“explicitly moving away from the focus on
reducing numbers,” says Robert McNeil of
the Migration Observatory at Oxford Uni-
versity. The new policy is also significantly
more liberal than that recommended by
the government’s independent migration
advisory committee.
It is good news for universities. BritainAn about-turn allows more foreigners
to study—and work—in BritainInternational studentsHire education