luoto

All I said was that BA is not performing particularly badly (following T5 decline) compared to the FTSE and that the markets are so far not as bothered about it as others maybe.

BA probably does have its problems, I have no position on them.

Over the longer term BA shares might have lost value (or has it corrected itself to a more reasonable value... that is something that financial analysts can argue over as share price is normally something someone is willing to pay).

Things go up and down, just look at Ryanair's share price vs BA's vs ftse for example on a % basis.

http://finance.google.com/finance?ch...IRF&q=LON:BAY&

But I don't care And I don't work for BA either. Or any of the companies mentioned in this post.

Maybe BA hopes the Yanks will come and save it (from last night's news wire)


NEW YORK, April 2, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- A great opportunity to visit Europe this summer, with an added $50 bonus offer on land arrangements, is being launched today by British Airways.

Roundtrip airfares begin at $378 between New York (JFK or Newark) and London, with comparable sale fares available to other cities including Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam and Prague.

Travelers also have the option to upgrade to World Traveller Plus, the airline's premium economy cabin, starting from $125 each way from select U.S. gateway cities to London.

Travelers purchasing roundtrip tickets within this period will also receive a $50 discount per person on land arrangements throughout Europe, including hotel, car rental, airport/hotel transfer and sightseeing, such as London Sightseeing Pass, Paris Express City Tour, Amsterdam City Sightseeing Tour, and the Prague Vltava River Lunch Cruise.

Fares are available for sale through Thursday midnight (EDT), Apr. 10, 2008. Travel is valid from Apr. 8, 2008, through May 25, 2008. Sale fares are also available for travel May 26, 2008, through Sep. 3, 2008.

Further information on this promotion and other British Airways offers are available by visiting the airline's website, www.ba.com/april.

Comparable airfares are available from all 18 British Airways' U.S. cities to destinations across the U.K. and Europe. Sample roundtrip fares include Boston/Brussels starting at $495, Miami/Zurich beginning at $723, Dallas, Ft. Worth/Frankfurt starting at $623 and Denver/Istanbul starting at $879.

World Traveller roundtrip fares must be booked and purchased seven days in advance and are nonrefundable. World Traveller Plus roundtrip fares must be booked and purchased 21 days in advance. Fares may be higher for other travel dates, from other U.S. departure gateways and to other destinations. Weekend (Thursday-Sunday) surcharge applies at $30 each way. Fares are subject to government approval and do not include government fees and taxes from approximately $165 to $250 and a $2.50 September 11 Security Fee. Minimum stay of Saturday night is required and maximum stay is 11 months. $50 savings must be purchased with British Airways roundtrip published airfare originating in the U.S. Other significant restrictions apply.

luoto

Finlandia huh...

Real stuff is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koskenkorva_Viina

pasoundman

Yabut ......

You need some customers to have any turnover never mind PROFIT.

By scaring the pax (and especially the profitable pax) away Wee Willie has cut his own throat.

BAengineering

Skipness - with respect, I wouldn't dare interfere with your professional status as I assume a pilot, I have uptmost respect for that communities integrity and professionalism. I would have no hesitation of flying with you or any of your very highly trained and industry respected colleagues at BA.

If you are stating you have confidence issues with BA engineering in general you should raise that through your safety review board. Just because and employee or group of employees are angry does not mean in any way shape or form that they would compromise safety. I would therefore respectively request that you retract your statement as it is very damaging in itself.

To suggest the thread is disintegrating into waffle and personal attacks immediately following your personal attack on my own professional integrity is rich!

Please get back to the subject in hand, yes I am very sure there are people at BA who would love for this thread to be shut down and bannished from history. As stated earlier, a well known technique of Joseph Gorbels.

One thing, i fail to understand this from your post;

That really does not mke sense, so it's ok for the Pilots to kill BA stone dead with a strike (which incidently I fully support them) but wrong for me to voice an opinion about the current problems at BA? Come on, I'm not saying very much different than what's out there in the media, clearly BA as usual is leking like a sieve. You may well know of other forums which the media and others glean information from, including BA staff approaching the media directly with information.

What IMHO is going to kill the brand stone dead, as you say, is an arrogant and disconnected management team, check out the following article from Travel Weekly, on an HR point it states; LINK

And great some positive news, T5 going to full service on Saturday.... we wait and see.

The Controlller

All
Just a reminder who has to mop up the crap and try to keep the show on the road........OPS.......please please please remember that we are only the piggy in the middle. The abuse we have taken over the past week is unbelieveable ...this situ is NOT our doing so bear in mind we are humans too with family/school fees/mortages etc etc.
Maybe I need some TLC ? or a lagre GNT

Skipness One Echo

Sadly I'm not a pilot I'm SLF that's been on one or way too many VERY LATE BA flights of late. Coming back to every point made you disagree with adds little to the debate I'm afraid ! Let me clarify, if BA Open Skies takes off as is proposed, you will have the Jetstar scenario writ large. PLEASE use the search facility if you want to learn more on that but essentially it is a backdoor strategy to lower overall group Ts & Cs.

pasoundman

And you BELIEVE them ????? Do you think they can ever DELIVER ???

What does that say about the management that thought it was going to offer a better 'experience' from DAY ONE at T5 ?

Are they complete LOONIES or what ?

I actually agree with 'BAengineering' mostly. It's the responsibility of people who CARE not just to 'put up with it' but to press for CHANGE !

This style of management HAS TO GO ! That's all there is to it. It's killing the company. Platitudes mean nothing. This is SERIOUS ! The LOONIES *have to go * !

pasoundman

Did anyone ever doubt that ?

It's entirely typical of the 'MBA culture' of reducing the conditions and pay of the people who actually do the work in order to reduce costs. Just how long do they think they can wring some more out of it ?

pasoundman

But how is it performing as an AIRLINE ?

Even heard of the 'Golden Goose' ?

BAengineering

Yep PASoundman, nice postings.

And Skipness, I of course fully understand the problems with Openskies. I came to this site after I felt internal BA messages were aiming to alienate the Pilots group from within BA. That again is a technique used to very good effect during the nazi campaigns of Gorbels. I came to the site to express 'our' support for the pilot community. Since the T5 fiasco blewup I have decided to stay and provide an opinion to what has happened and what needs to be done to restore BA to it's former position.

I fully agree with you, whilst not understanding the sentence, that a Pilot strike will be the final nail in the coffin of BA. That I agree would be a very sad day. Yet, as detailed in my earlier post, I'm getting an uneasy feeling of 'purpose' to all this. First a Terminal disaster, WW then maintains his defiant stance toward pilots, this can only be an intentional effort to break BA up, IMHO.

pasoundman

Well actually.... right now a strike from ANY section of BA staff would kill the company. Stone Dead I reckon.

Seems to me like a remarkable opportunity to rid yourselves of the worthless WW and friends.

Basically you can put the company up as hostage until someone comes along and removes the LOONIES. Dare I be that bold ?

Yes, I'd expect WW and his cronies to put up a fight but frankly they've screwed up T5 so badly, who would want them any more ? They're dead men walking quite frankly.

pacamack

Why don't people try and answer the following questions to help them understand why BA's share price might be depressed before they start screaming about miss-management:

What is one of BA's biggest single costs?
What has been happening to this?

Which market segment provides most of BA's revenues?
What has been going on in the world that is likely to impact on this segment?
Is demand from this segment likely to increase or decrease in the near future?

What implications is the Open Skies agreement likely to have on BA's market position?

Are investors likely to know the answers to these questions?
Are investors likely to understand the implications of these answers?

Tagron

As an ex-BA employee of 30 years service I have to say I never expected for one moment that the transfer to T5 would be the triumph that BA proclaimed it would be, though I was unprepared for and shocked by the sheer magnitude of the operational and PR disaster that unfolded.

To reach this assessment one only has to look back over BA's operational performance over the last few years or even decades. Look at its ongoing LHR departure punctuality and baggage performance and how badly it compares with competitor airlines. How many flights get cancelled as soon as there is a whiff of difficulties ? And then there is the apparently unmeasurable and erratic nature of the LHR arrival experience.

From time to time it would appear some of these problems were on the way to resolution, only for the situation to deteriorate again. What conclusion does one draw from BA's long term operational performance ? I suggest it is that the integrity of the operational programme is not high enough in BA management's mindset. They have scant regard for passengers' reasonable expectations.

My experience is that the vast majority of the workforce do their utmost to keep the show on the road even when problems are plainly the result of poor planning and inadequate resources. And the customer contact staff have to bear the brunt of passengers' dissatisfaction. Small wonder that hatred of management is so ingrained in the workforce.

There were already plenty of former customers out there with horror stories to tell of BA reliability and who said "never again". Now as a result of the T5 debacle such sentiment is not just the view of individuals but part of the conventional wisdom of the nation. Even when T5 is sorted out - and I hope it happens swiftly - BA's performance will remain under scrutiny. Operational difficulties will be perceived as part of an ongoing disregard for the needs of its customers and highlighted, whether or not the fault of the airline. BA will be looked on as an an aerial British Rail. It will be the pre-privatisation days all over again.

So what is to be done ? Restoring confidence in operational integrity at LHR must be a top priority. LHR is a difficult airport because of its general congestion and its over-allocation of slots, but operations programmes must take LHR problems more fully into account and not rely on wishful thinking that everything will go as hoped. This will require more resources both of staff and equipment and more realistic scheduling of aircraft.

All this will have a cost of course and one can say goodbye to 10% margins - but these are almost certainly dead in the water now in any case.

If BA can change its ways then it has good prospects for the future. It needs to convince the travelling public that it is reliable, that passengers can travel as booked and that they and their baggage will arrive on time. It will only do that now on the back of demonstrated achieved performance. But if it does, it can use its PR machine not just as a mouthpiece for mindless froth and nauseating glossovers of failure, but to announce its real success with pride. Then you have a solid base for recovery of public confidence and, eventually, financial performance.

And the chances are....? The airline should be run by people who understand the customer service ethic and who understand aviation. I am far from convinced that BA top management fall into this category. Resolve this issue and maybe the other pieces will fall into place.

Human Factor

All very valid comments, Pacamack.

The interesting thing will be to see how comparable airlines (think Delta, AA, AF-KLM not EZ, RYR) have performed relative to their own markets over the same time. This will give an indication as to how the City views BA's internal troubles.

IMHO though, it's a wonder BA have any investors left and WW certainly isn't helping. In his favour though, I think he's now finally coming to understand that there is a whole wedge of people between him as CEO and your standard line manager who only got there by virtue of their inability to say "No" to anyone above them. Irrespective of whether WW stays or not, only when that tranche of management depart will BA start to improve and not until.

sidtheesexist

Tagron - excellent post sir/madam - I commend it to the house!

You highlight the real issue - the fragility of the operation, mainly due to unrealistic scheduling and an under-resourcing in key areas. This operational fragility leads to numerous breakdowns with the end result of late AC and misdirected baggage etc. QED - unhappy CUSTOMERS.

Management need to be reminded of the whole raison d'etre of an airline and start prioritising accordingly. In fact, better still, let's have a clear out of the top mgmt echelons - they've proved their incompetence!

luoto

Recently popped up on my screen.

03/04/2008 02:23 PM UK British Airways sees T5 impact of 16 mln stg

BA noted also that "...the impact was borne by the shorthaul schedule, where there were 300 cancelled flights, equating to 0.2 percentage points of capacity," it said in a statement.

groundhand

Tagron,

A good post but you do have the air of someone who has worked within as you say and not the understanding of where avaition has moved to in the last 10-15 years.

You are 100% right in terms of customer experience.
The BA brand is damaged, severely damaged to the point of being the laughing stock of global aviation - easpecially in Europe.

You are right in terms of the gulf between the CEO and how services are delivered to the paying customer.

I disagree with you in your view that sort the customer experience out and everything else will fall into place.

One of BA's main problems is one of cost. Costs from:
Too many staff - YES, still too many for the size of airline - just look at Waterside!; the number of levels of staff in every facet of the operation etc.
Ancient work practices - just look at the crew/groundstaff/customer service staff T&C's against any well run and progressive aviation company. People say Alitalia is bad but get into the detail of BA and it is horrific, probably worse than both Alitalia and Air France.

BA employees, from the Chairman, CEO down to the front line men and women have to realise that they are not 'the world's favorite' any more; that no-one owes them a living and that unless they collectively move forward their prospects are very dicey.

Moving forward will take a lot of balls because every BA employee will have to look inwardly and ask themselves 'Am I delivering a better service more cost effectively than the competition?' The current answer is obvious.

Have the collective staff got the honesty, integrity and the will to ask the question and take responsibility for the changes needed?

I VERY much doubt it, certainly not from the recent history of employee relations.

Will WW survive? Not really relevant to the big picture.
Will BA survive long term? Now there is the $64,000 question.

GH

BAengineering

Tagron - Mighty fine post, whilst not normally wishing to be associated with someone by the title 'sidthesexist' I fully agree it was a fine piece of literature.

And that's the point, a well balanced and calm individual, who worked for BA for neigh 30 yrs (I beat you there matey i've hung in longer!) knows that;

They are forceful words from a reasonable man. Maybe something can be rescued from the current situation..... A clear out of management, senior and Middle, a cultural change allround, and lose the YES men and fear for persons speaking out. An open and transparent efficient culture.

Sh1t I glazed over then, went into my Utopian world when really I work for an employer who holds totalitarian persuasions. I will eat my hat if things change, and that is a tall order, have you seen those bumpcaps they expect us engineers to wear?

Storminnorm

I love to try to keep track of WTHIH? at BA at present.
I'm OLD and find it difficult to keep pace with the present
situation as it develops.
My fuddled brain has come up with the idea that SOME
of the people that subscribe to this present bun-fight
over the T5 shambles seem to think that the situation
vis a vis the cock-up is a manufactured situation to get
the Pilots concerned about what COULD happen to the
Company if they take action over the "Openlies" matter.
Could someone kindly reassure me that this is NOT so?

groundhand

BA Eng

Or maybe it's a clearout of about 75%-85% of the 'core' workers as well as the management that's needed?

A phased role over, including out sourcing.

New people, new attitudes, new work practices...... utopia

And before you claim that I am a closet BA manager I can state that I have never been employed directly by BA; I have over 34 years in the business and have worked with BA on many occasions (and many other legacy and loco operators) on service delivery in various locations over the last 12 years or so.

GH