The management and direction of British airlines has changed deeply since I first started in the business in the 70s. My CEO in this period would stop you in the corridoor at head office, remember your name and ask you how you thought a particular route was going - or whatever. You were valued and respected. Today - well, it is no wonder that there are so many threads on this forum dealing with morale issues. CEOs are almost always transitory, have no real long-term passion for their company and are often plain bullies. Ask any Cabin Crew what they think of the British businessman - unjustified intellectual snobbery - sneering discourtesy and boorish behaviour. God knows how they must treat their wives. This mind-set is taken into the work-place and they appoint middle-managers who have the same stance - hence the tranche of arrogant second-raters who run, with a truly stunning lack of integrity, some airline fleets and training departments today. The one bright spark in this lamentable decline has been Barbara from 'GO' - who saw as plain as day that if you adopt the Southwest model, then people skills come with it too - she believed it and she acted it.
The current direction in the British airline arena is pretty dire - more or less across the board. CEOs must come to realise that the airline business is truly different to selling houses/soap/used cars et al, and that the people who work for them start out not as ciphers, but as motivated, valuable, technically trained professionals. It is, of course easier to be destructive from below than constructive at the top; nevertheless, if some integrity is not pumped back in soon, then I fear for the safety statistics.