BA have had some positive news recently. There was the recent shock that they made a profit (for the first time in 2 years). For an airline, in the current climate, it was a quite respectable pre-tax profit of £158m for the 6 months until September 2010. Shares are up about 50% on the year to date, despite potential catastrophic disasters such as Ash gate and the infamous cabin crew strike. Now they're reporting an increase in passengers compared to October 2009. There is an increase of nearly 4%.

The other good news for BA is that its first and business class traffic is starting to increase. This shows that post credit crunch (we hope) business users have the confidence to travel again. The rest of the airline industry will be buoyed by this news too.

The final piece of good news for British Airways is that the Court of Appeal refused an application by the cabin crews who were claiming that their contracts had been breached by BA reducing staff numbers on flights from Heathrow. Things are looking very rosy for BA at the moment and if they carry on the way they are going, it may take less than the predicted 20 years or more to plug the £3.7bn pension deficit!!

It seems like the tough stance Willie Walsh has taken with cabin crew has started to pay off after all.