British Airways hopes that Operation Columbus will transport it to a new world of low costs in which it can survive, and even thrive, in an era of sky-high fuel prices. But it threatens to plunge it into the all too familiar old world of industrial confrontation.

All airlines are having to think the unthinkable at the moment as they attempt to cope with the doubling of the oil price over the last year. As George Arpey, head of American Airlines, said recently, the industry was simply not built to withstand oil prices at $125 a barrel.

So the US airlines are trying to rebuild it by introducing new charges – such as the $15 fee for checking in a bag that American announced last month – by cutting capacity and by negotiating concessions from their workforces.

Those negotiations appear to be progressing reasonably well in the US, where the unions recognise the dire prospects that the airline industry faces.

BA is confronting an equally daunting challenge, admitting that it could see profits of £875 million last year wiped out by soaring fuel bills this year.

However, BA’s history of appalling industrial relations makes its job that much more difficult. The lack of trust was underlined by the reaction to BA’s denial of rumours that it was contemplating outsourcing all its Heathrow and Gatwick cabin crew. BA said that it was looking at a number of radical options as part of Operation Columbus, but denied that outsourcing was one of those options.

The reaction of some employees was that BA was playing with words and that it was indeed considering an overhaul of cabin crews’ terms and conditions by shifting them to some sort of new entity.

It is easy to see why they might be suspicious. Many of BA’s international rivals have lower costs, in part because they employ cheaper cabin staff from Asia. BA has already made several attempts to set up separate lower-cost operations to compete in particular markets, employing staff on poorer terms than those enjoyed by its core staff in the UK.

More recently BA has launched a new operation to take advantage of the US/European Union “open skies” treaty that liberalises transatlantic air travel. Managed from New York, this new subsidiary has hired pilots and cabin crew in the US.

BA’s pilots were up in arms, but dropped their proposed strike after BA threatened legal action.

The unions fear that Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, might use its OpenSkies operation as a Trojan Horse that would gradually take over other routes.

The model here could be Qantas, which four years ago set up a low-cost operation called Jetstar Airways. Jetstar took over some routes that Qantas said were uneconomic. However, more recently Qantas has moved some mainstream routes over to the Jetstar operation.

After years of painful restructuring, which has dramatically reduced its cost base, it is clear that BA needs to take further action.

Mr Walsh wants BA to be in a position to take advantage of rivals’ weakness. But he is playing a dangerous game. By squeezing costs too far, he risks reducing further BA’s quality of service, which is one of its main selling points, particularly for business travellers.

As the latest Which? survey shows, BA’s customer satisfaction scores are distinctly average.

Even if he avoids provoking industrial action, Mr Walsh may find he does not end up quite where he hoped. A bit like Columbus.

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