Mayday! BA goes into a tailspin
Can Willie Walsh land British Airways safely, asks Alistair Osborne.
By Alistair Osborne
Published: 8:11PM BST 01 Jul 2009
You remember the scene. Up pops air stewardess Elaine Dickinson on the inflight intercom. "There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight," she says. "By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"
That was Airplane!, the spoof disaster-movie from 1980. Fast forward two decades and you wonder if you couldn't find the same comic potential in the current goings-on at British Airways. Once the self-styled "world's favourite airline", our national flag-carrier has never been in such a tailspin. If you doubt the veracity of that, just ask the man in the BA cockpit – Willie Walsh, its diminutive, Dublin-born chief executive. Rarely does a day go by without him warning BA's 40,000 staff that the airline is in a "fight for survival" – a mantra recently accompanied by the cack-handed request that staff should "apply" to work for nothing.
Story
Can Willie Walsh land British Airways safely, asks Alistair Osborne.
By Alistair Osborne
Published: 8:11PM BST 01 Jul 2009
You remember the scene. Up pops air stewardess Elaine Dickinson on the inflight intercom. "There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight," she says. "By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"
That was Airplane!, the spoof disaster-movie from 1980. Fast forward two decades and you wonder if you couldn't find the same comic potential in the current goings-on at British Airways. Once the self-styled "world's favourite airline", our national flag-carrier has never been in such a tailspin. If you doubt the veracity of that, just ask the man in the BA cockpit – Willie Walsh, its diminutive, Dublin-born chief executive. Rarely does a day go by without him warning BA's 40,000 staff that the airline is in a "fight for survival" – a mantra recently accompanied by the cack-handed request that staff should "apply" to work for nothing.
Story
