Is that right Overstress? You have friends leaving BASSA for what? To throw themselves at the mercy of Walsh?
What a load of rubbish.
It is ony a few short months ago that Willie Walsh was on Question Time campaigning for a third runway at LHR. Why would he be doing that if he knew there was going to be a crisis, with the airline under imminent threat of going bust? Why did he not take action before? How could he get it so wrong? Why was capacity not cut BEFORE the summer schedule if things looked so dire? What has he been doing.....gone to sleep on the job?
So the UK is going to host the 2012 Olympics, but will have no national carrier? Why is money still being pumped into OpenSkies flying thirsty 757's with no passengers and no hope in sight of ever being proiftable. Only Willie Walsh could predict that 30 airlines are going to go bust in the recession, and then starts one himself! A business carrier like OS starts flying, when BA cannot fill the Club cabins on its mainline operation. Can anyone here make sense of that?
Somehow I don't believe that BA is going bust? Airlines like ALITALIA and OLYMPIC are still there, even SAS, yet Walsh predicts that BA will go bust before them? Doesn't say much about the quality of the Leadership Team at BA. Have they really painted the airline into this corner, that only screwing the T&C's of its employees will save the carrier from disaster? Such a reversal of fortune will eclipse even the mismanagement of ENRON.
It is not going to look good on Walsh's CV that he was the Captain at the helm when it hit the reef. If BA goes bust, he is finished too. I think he has more ambition than that.
However it may just be that the CEO of BA is just a cost cutter with no finesse to close the deal with IBERIA, or to steer the carrier through choppy waters without alienating most of his staff. Walsh got lucky at Aer Lingus and left just in time. Now there is nowhere to go.
It will be a interesting few weeks.