Just saw this on Wickipedia;
Early life
Walsh was born in
Dublin,
Ireland. He attended his local secondary school
Ardscoil Rís. At the age of 17 he became a pilot at
Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus, joining as a
cadet in
1979. During his time as a pilot he acted as chief negotiator for the
Irish Airline Pilots Association (IALPA) and is quoted during this time that
"a reasonable man gets nowhere in negotiations". He also acquired a
Master's degree in management and business administration from
Trinity College, Dublin during his pilot years.
1
He later joined company management, with various positions including that of
Chief Executive of then company subsidiary,
Futura from
1998 to
2000.
[edit] Aer Lingus Chief Executive
In
October 2001 he was appointed Chief Executive from his then position of
Chief Operating Officer, succeeding Michael Foley who had resigned following a harassment complaint. The carrier was in financial difficulty in the wake of the market downturn following the events of
September 11, 2001, losing
£2m per day[
citation needed]. Walsh took action by eliminating 2,000 staff positions, reducing the number of aircraft types and selling non-core assets, including an art collection at the company headquarters. He reconfigured Aer Lingus as a
low cost airline in imitation of
Ryanair, and began withdrawing from various services like short-haul Business Class and cargo services and heavily restricting the airline's
frequent flyer programme, TAB.
The company operating profits rebounded but the cost of the write-offs and redundancies meant that net profitability was not as quick to recover. Not all of Walsh's reforms were successful, such as the outsourcing of aircraft cleaning. The contracting had not been agreed with Aer Lingus unions which led to large payments to the private contractor while Aer Lingus employees did the cleaning work. A three day
lockout occurred in 2002 during the peak of the cutbacks.
The management team suggested to the principal shareholder, the
Irish Government, a float of Aer Lingus on the
stock market. Stock floats are often rewarding to top management and this was opposed by the unions who feared a privatised Aer Lingus would impose even tougher working conditions. The Government eventually turned down the float and this led to Walsh and other management executives resigning from the company in
January 2005.
The Irish prime minister,
Bertie Ahern, subsequently described Walsh's offer of an MBO as
"[a time] when management wanted to steal the assets for themselves through a management buy out, shafting staff interests." Dáil record, 17 May 2006.
Dermot Mannion, formerly of
Emirates Airline, succeeded Walsh as Aer Lingus Chief Executive.
[edit] British Airways Chief Executive
The
British Airways board were seeking a successor to Chief Executive
Rod Eddington who had announced plans to return to his native
Australia at the end of his contract. Walsh was hired in
May 2005 at the age of 43 with a six month shadowing period to get to know the business before the departure of Eddington on
October 1,
2005.
Since Willie Walsh took over the reins of British Airways as CEO in October 2005, he has headed the airline during a time of unprecedented turmoil and industrial relations problems.
Summer 2005 - ground staff walk out in support of Gate Gourmet
Summer 2006 - Fuel surcharge price fixing - airline fined record £270 million
Summer 2006 - British Airways was announced by the Association of European Airlines as having lost the most luggage in 2006 compared to other major European airlines. For every 1000 passengers carried, it lost 23 bags, 46% more than the average March 2008 - T5 Chaos - opening of £4.3 billion heathrow terminal descends into chaos.
Famous 'not our finest hour' quote by Willie Walsh
In an interview provided for Skynews Mr Walsh vowed to stay on at the airline, probably to sort out his own mess.
Feel free to go edit and add your own comments to the historical document.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_...hief_Executive