Re Heat:
Nothing. He is also a Chartered Accountant, and has a great deal of other business experience. Being involved in an airline is no qualification for running it.
I'm sorry Sir, but that's not the point. The Chairman's business experience is irrelevant, because he has no say in anything to do with accounting, and it would be totally wrong for him to get involved anyway.
The function of the Chairman and the Board is to hire the Chief Executive and perform the corporate governance and risk management functions necessary to monitor what the Chief Executive is doing with the business. It's up to the Chief Executive to do the rest. The Board does not originate anything. The CEO does. The Board pokes and prods the CEO's plans and looks for weaknesses, and they had better not find any. That is the required expertise of the Board, corporate governance and risk management skills. A business background in an airline would in my opinion help inform this process. I speak from experience as a CEO (not of an airline!).
If the Board don't like what is being done, then they
may give the CEO a chance to correct matters, but usually it means finding a new CEO.
The issue to me is that I cannot think of any less "people oriented" business than the purveying of tobacco. It is therefore a risk in my opinion that in the corporate governance role, the Board hasn't (doesn't /won't) given much consideration to corporate governance and risk management issues surrounding the hapless passengers consigned to T5, or anywhere else in the BA system.....or much thought to "people issues" surrounding the staff.
To put it another way, what sort of person would want to have anything to do with a Tobacco company? What attitudes to their fellow humans might such an appointment demonstrate? How would those attitudes translate into an airline?
Business experience be buggered, we are talking character and attitudes here. If WW went he would be replaced with more of the same.