1. How would you classify this type of crisis? From an operational perspective, does this classification mean anything? What would a better approach to its classification be? The airline industry is an integral part of the travel industry, carrying millions of passengers across the world every day of the year. It is a multimillion pound business and relies heavily, like most travel services, on people. Therefore, effective human resource management is essential to its success. Failure to manage employee relations efficiently and fairly can lead to industrial conflict, resulting in a variety of unwanted ‘outputs’

including: stress, anxiety and loss of pay for staff; customer dissatisfaction and stress through flight delays; loss of business for the airline and interrelated services; and poor publicity not only for the organization but also for the sector.

British Airways (BA; see http://www.britishairways.com) is a large player in the airline industry. It was privatized in 1987 as part of the UK government’s privatization policy. It employs nearly 40,000 employees. In 1997, as part of a cost-cutting exercise, it outsourced the part of the business that prepared in-flight meals to a company called Gate Gourmet. The employees who made the meals and had originally worked for BA were transferred to Gate Gourmet