BA Managers having meetings with themselves!

[Janeee]

The following is written by Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard - I think he has been reading this board and peeping through the windows at waterworks!! Sound advice though!!

British Airways is probably doing a bit better than today's figures would have us believe. Air travel has picked up on the transatlantic routes, to judge from the recent results of KLM and some American carriers, and BA should have benefited from that.

But it does no harm for employees and the City to think it is up to its neck in problems. It will make both rather more inclined to accept the pain to come when the result of the detailed 'future size and shape' study is revealed.

The core competence of the airline is clearly in long haul - that is what it has done best since the days of BOAC and what it's fleet is designed for. But an intriguing development is that some of the existing European routes out of Gatwick are to be converted to no-frills low-cost operations. It will be a difficult task to pull off - either a carrier is structured from top to bottom to be low cost or it isn't. Trying to be half and half risks doing neither well.

On an admittedly-superficial level, the best thing chief executive Rod Eddington could do to institute a culture of change would be to close and sell Waterside, BA's gleaming headquarters near Heathrow. Opened just a few years ago by Bob Ayling, then chief executive, it has come to symbolise a lot of what has gone wrong - too many unaccountable managers having meetings with themselves to the detriment of focus on the customer. Closing it would not solve BA's problems but it would send a powerful signal."

[Cayman]

The text of the message is wrong.

Curently BA managers have meetings with several other managers who have nowt to do but attend meetings with one and another.

The day that a manager is alone and able to make his / hers own mind then BA might stand a chance.

Assuming that the managers left behind are the better ones and not just those left behind as they could not get a job elsewhere

C

[twistedenginestarter]

Lets get back to facts. You cannot have a department, or a project, without a manager. It's simply impossible.

By contrast pilots are somewhat optional. We used to have 3 (sometimes one of them was called an engineer). Now we are down to two but largely the other one is only there because the first one is prone to making mistakes. And anyway the first one really only serves to engage the FMS. Everyone knows the autopilot is altogether better at flying than any of the flight crew. Remember who gets control in Cat 2.

What Rod needs to do is get a long wire fitted so the ground crew can engage the computers with a tug from a suitable hook.

With no flight crew the premium passengers can then use the beds. One up on Virgin!

No - leave the managers alone. They work a full British Week (50 hours) and there's only ever one of them at a time.

(And they don't waste time posting on bulletin boards....)

[brain fade]

Twisted,. .Excellent post! I suppose the next logical move would be to get rid of the planes also (nasty smelly expensive things) course we'd need to get some quality people in to manage that, then we could make a start on ploughing up LHR. Think of the savings!!!! <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

[cln 7r]

know somebody who works for BA. widley accepted ( according to source) that there are far too many managers who do not account to anybody and are surplus to real need.. .These people getting very nervous about future changes as they know that thier holiday is about to come to an end and they are going to have to start working for a living. If they are lucky and aren't sent packing, dont get me wrong nobody likes to see redundancies!. .But there is already a pretty healthy surplus list within BA.

Big juice - as we are all to aware it seems to be the hard grafters who lose out and the wasters "old school" who remain to send the company down the tubes. This goes for any international/ major business.

Twisted, a 50 hour week is as about as much use as tits on a nun if you acheive nothing!!! <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

[Recover]

Twisted,

Given your logic, every department must have a manager. Of the 63000 BA employees (Sept 10 figures, 26000 have manager written after their titles and are paid accordingly. Working for the company, I realise that you would need at least 4 managers per department because they can't do anything by themselves and need the constant reassurance and 'valuing' by like-minded drones. So that'll be 6500 departments then. Ireckon I could get away with about 20 departments and do what the company is MEANT to do: get people safely from A to B, on time and in as much comfort as possible. As opposed to running a computer company, school, hospital, consultation department....need I go on.

Bring in the axe and get rid of them all. If they don't work directly on or for the front-line, they should be kicked out.

. .And.......

. .Recover

[Sir Kitt Braker]

Well - not all of them Recover - leave the three managers on all the aeroplanes - The Flight Manager, the Assistant Manager and the Cabin Manager.

[twistedenginestarter]

Recover

Your stats are rather shocking I have to agree. The purpose of my post was to point out that managers are important. You couldn't sit serenely up the front gazing at the fluffy white clouds and just following standard operating procedures if lots and lots of back room people had not put a lot of hard work, creativity, risk taking, inter-personal conflict etc etc into setting the whole show up. And believe me, no managers = no results.

What Rod needs to do is to ask every single person. . <ul type="square"> what do you contribute to the business? what things could be ditched without us dying?[/list]He should assign protection to anyone who snitches on themselves or on their own area.

Standard approach I know, but it will get rid of the 25980 excess managers. Rod cannot solve the problem alone. He must mobilise the contribution of every individual from the top to the bottom of the Organisation. He must also get theit buy-in. Not difficult, but is Rod the man with this talent? I'm not so sure...

[Deadleg]

Twisted, half right about the Cat 2, the A/P does the approach but I have to do the landing having disc at 80 ft. BTW I also have to recognise failures(some quite subtle) and fly the G/A to somewhere Cat1. Remember also an FMS is just a machine:S*&t in = s*&t out!

[Georgeablelovehowindia]

I wonder how many autolands were performed at LHR and other UK airfields this week. Not very many, I'll wager, especially with LHR on 23 for some of the time!

[Recover]

Twisted,

"You couldn't sit serenely up the front gazing at the fluffy white clouds and just following standard operating procedures if lots and lots of back room people had not put a lot of hard work, creativity, risk taking, inter-personal conflict etc etc into setting the whole show up".

Yes I could.

I have to admit that I can't quite figure out whether your comments are tongue-in-cheek or serious. I hope they're the former.

To take the points individually:

"Lots and lots of hard work". Is this Waterworld language for 'let's all sit around by the stream drinking coffee after a busy 30 minutes doing our Waitrose shopping (using company machines and company time).

"Creativity". Is that the tailfin type creativity or is it the World Traveller multi-couloured-don't-go-in-the-trolley type creativity. Maybe it's the invent-a-brand-new-IFE-system (only £10m)-and-then-buy-off-the-shelf-because-it-doesn't-work. Maybe it's the Deli-bags with stuff all in them or the silly adverts on TV showing lots of people queueing for the aircraft. Need I go on? THe whole marketing dept should be shut down straight away.

"Risk taking". Waterworld and risk-taking...now should I have the jam donut or do I risk the chocolate eclair with my 0900-before-I-start-shopping-break. The only thing that gets risked is more stupid ideas jeaporising every worthwhile (for that read front-line) person's livelihood. Either that, or "do I risk not backing up the data as I install an untested booking sytem, therby causing the whole of BA to grind to a halt and lose os millions of pounds". Well, I suppose that would be worth risking becasue at least you could get promoted out of the current job.

"Inter-personal conflict". Valid point. Send them onto the flight deck with me and discover the meaning of the phrase.

There are a few people in Ww who are valueable. They save lots of money with fuel hedging, overbooking etc. All the rest are just a waste of rations. Out-source IT. Close the medical centre. Close the community education centre and for God's sake, get rid of worthless nerds like the Sustainable Resources Education Executives.

I need very little to fly around those fluffy white clouds. I need engineers, cabin crew, passengers and someone to get the pax on board (from selling them tickets to checking them in). What I don't need is the hangers-on that one so often sees in stupid costumes or schemes on every Thursday's BA news. Just give me RE's job for a month and I'd show you what I mean.

. .And......

Recover

[White Knight]

Well said Recover, couldn't have put it better myself.

Time to lose the useless people...........

[twistedenginestarter]

Recover. . [quote] Just give me RE's job for a month and I'd show you what I mean. <hr></blockquote>

You have put your finger on the issue. It's your airline not mine. Rod is only human, and probably a touch frail at that. Somehow you (all of you) have got to tell him what the solution is. If he is not inviting you to suggest changes then you'll have to be tell him anyway.

"Dear Rod

I am a front line pilot and I am proud to work for the Worlds Best Airline. I want to make sure we stay in business and be successful. You clearly realise changes have to be made to reduce under-performance within our organisation, and to maximise the committment of all our employess to pull us out of our current difficulties. I wish you luck in making these difficult decisions. All I can do is offer a few suggestions based on what I and my colleagues feel about areas for improvement. Our greatest concern is the number of functions that appear to consume revenue to little purpose - revenue that we work hard to generate. The closure of departments such as Sustainable Resources Education Executives would be seen as a signal that we are genuinely concentrating on delivering excellent service to customers which is ultimately the key to staying Number One

Regards

Reginald Cover"

Well you get the idea...

[kfw]

A few things said in jest here but fairly close to reality . I did an A/l onto 27L yesterday in the part of the day that the wx was ok because thats what the nubrf requested , what a pigs ear the 3 AP's made of it .

I can't find these fluffy white clouds talked of only the big black ones moving at 40 kts .

Phoned ops to let them know we'd reduce rest only to be told of what such an awful day they'd had in an airconditioned office in front of a CRT . I refrained from telling them the day we had using r/w 23