Open Skies - a transitory airline

After I left the airline I had the pleasure of having Mars as a client for over 25 years. During that time I learned a great deal about this giant company, a leader in confectionery (Mars Bars, Milky Way etc), rice and main meals (Uncle Bens, Dolmio etc) and petfood (Pedigree, Whiskas etc).

One of the sad facts of life for Mars is how difficult it is to create a new product, and in fact Mars’ main product names have been around for years - I exclude Starburst which are renamed Opal Fruits, Snickers which are renamed Marathons and Celebrations which are only small versions of their main brands. During the time they were clients, we must have been involved in a dozen or so new product launches, all of which were delicious products, great campaigns but sales failures.

One important reason is that in today’s crowded marketplace, dominated by expensive media, the cost of the product (roughly 50p) can only justify long term advertising and marketing support if it sells in bucketfuls right from the start. If it doesn’t the product is dropped.

That isn’t the strategy that works in the airline business. The infrastructure costs involved in starting a new route, let alone a new airline like Open Skies, demands in-depth market research, long-term commitment, determined and steady development. It certainly demands clearer thinking at the top than BA shows it is capable of giving.

Mars spends a great deal of money testing new product ideas - obesity amongst the housewives and children of Slough must be a perennial problem!

In contrast and on the evidence available, marketing at British Airways is driven by the latest travelogue the management have seen on TV or the latest idea a competitor has dreamed up. How much serious market research is made into the viability of new routes/airlines?

Look at the bases on which Open Skies was started.

Concept - the premium class airline concept had already failed twice in as many years.

Routes:
Amsterdam - New York - probably the most efficient and well-known hub in Europe, the home of an airline renowned for customer service.

Paris - New York - has Mr Walsh ever been to France? Does he not know how insular the French are? And does he know how second rate Orly is compared to CDG? This decision alone makes Mr Walsh look like the man who bought London Bridge for Lake Havasu all the while convinced he’d purchased Tower Bridge.

Given this level of naivety (and his evident antipathy for unions both before and since he became CEO) is it conceivable that Mr Walsh forced through the launch of Open Skies as a device to beat BALPA over the head rather than as a serious and balanced attempt to create a new airline?

Now, little more than 12 months since launching the airline and barely six months after starting Amsterdam-New York, BALPA is accepting shares instead of pay and Open Skies is clouding over. Decisions like this suggest a complete lack of market research and corporate panic at the very top.

And this is the company into which pensioners have just sunk over £300 million of guarantees!

The Sales Team to turn BA around

The cries for Mr Walsh to quit rose to a clamour at this week’s BA AGM and it’s hard to see how long he can resist them.

At the same time the futility, even incompetence of the airline’s sales policy shines like a beacon of idiocy - only yesterday in Los Angeles BA announced it is giving away 1000 seats to businessmen to “persuade them of the value of face-to-face meetings”.

Do the Sales Wizards at BA really imagine that businessmen don’t know these things and that they aren’t travelling BA in particular for entirely different reasons? Is giving seats away the height of brain power in BA Sales?

Such stupidity lies at the root of BA’s problems. They let the drivers and the MBA wallahs run the airline. Don’t they watch TV or read the business pages? What are the commonalities shared by the Dragon’s Den gurus, by Sir Alan Sugar, by Sir John Harvey Jones from another generation, or by Stuart Rose or Philip Green? They all know that if their sales teams aren’t functioning at their very best, ie selling, not giving the stuff away, their enterprises are doomed. (If you want a great example look at M&S. Following a short-term reduction in prices to get the punters back through the doors, Stuart Rose has driven revenues and profits by improving the product, the buying experience and the confidence in the brand. Compare that to Paddy Survival’s strategy.

This blog has been saying for months, even years that the short term solution to BA’s problems, once they’ve raised enough money to finance the next few months, is to get rid of the CEO, give the entire passenger handling job to an agency and hire a team of old-fashioned sales people.

Anyone who, like me, spent 30 years after the airline in business, could nominate such a team within a week. They’d be superannuated grey-beards who’d have to be tempted back from the golf course but salespeople don’t change underneath. They remain people who can inspire and motivate others to want to walk through walls to meet their sales objectives. In 30 years of making television and video programmes, many for big blue-chip companies, I’ve met scores of such people. They’re out there and they could turn BA round.

Send in Sir Gerry Robinson

I wonder if Mr Walsh was watching another Irish businessman, Sir Gerry Robinson, on television recently. In the programme, Gerry’s Big Decision, a “me-too” business programme of the type first brought to prominence by Sir John Harvey Jones many years ago, Sir Gerry, formerly head of Granada TV and many other leading UK companies, considers investing his own money in a number of companies with problems.

In both the recent examples, the problem was with the present “top dog” of the company. In both, Robinson’s analysis featured remarks like “great product, good workforce, but the management aren’t talking to the staff and there’s just no evidence of any sales activity or ability”.

I was struck by the similarity with British Airways. Whenever I fly BA I ask the crew whether they’ve met Mr Walsh. Most have had him on their aircraft but other than the usual brief discourse between crew and passengers there’s no contact. He boards ahead of other passengers, and buries himself in a newspaper rather than actually talk to the “other ranks”.

This is strange for every senior manager I’ve ever known, in every company with which I’ve worked (and that includes a good few blue-chip companies during my time in television) takes such opportunities to talk direct to the crew, to ask questions and get the views of people at the sharp end without the modification and editorialising that happens when the same information is filtered up through the system.

Why not ask Sir Gerry to have a look at British Airways? He might not have enough money himself (though right now the share value of the airline is nowt) but he has the experience. In a previous television programme, he tackled Britain’s NHS so taking on British Airways needn’t be too big a project. The real problem is that the management of BA is too pig-headed, so utterly convinced it and it alone is right, Gerry Robinson wouldn’t even get through the front door.

Corporal Jones was right, we're doomed.

It is hard not to agree with the accuracy of the charge levelled at the CEO of BA by Unite - that Mr Walsh can hardly be surprised if forward bookings on the airline are a disaster if a disaster is all the CEO spends his time talking about. Quite apart from the charge that his message of doom was actually intended to influence the UK and US governments in favour of his desperate anti-passenger tie-up with American, what has he said recently that would encourage anybody with a few quid to put down for a future flight to book with BA?

My spies in KLM and AF report that business reaction to their recent sales blitz are very encouraging. Their business travellers received them enthusiastically and reaffirmed their commitments to the airlines whenever they travel.

Meanwhile from Manchester Airport more news that confirms the marketing strategy and sales prowess of Mr Walsh are a myth, Emirates is shortly to increase its flights from Manchester to Dubai to three a day. BA flies from Manchester to London and a couple of other European cities.

Of course it was Mr Walsh’s predecessor, R. Eddington, who fired the sales teams but W Walsh has been in command for three years now - plenty of time for a far-seeing CEO (if he was ever but a shadow of one) to have installed and trained new teams.

A sales team means that in tough times you have two choices - sell more seats and increase capacity to meet the need, or reduce capacity to meet the market demand - with the risk that the market finds it can do without you entirely.

Without a sales team Mr Walsh has only one option and having wasted too much time since he was appointed, he’s probably doomed.

If that’s so there’s only one option left and that’s to get rid of the entire management, bring in a CEO with the flair and standing that the banks and money people will trust and put the airline on a business footing once again.

Is London City to JFK really a good idea?

As BA “consolidates” further (otherwise known as retreating into the Heathrow bunker) it’s worth considering how the airline will actually market its much-vaunted London City to JFK service.

To counter the retro “one-stop” service which the length of London City runway and the width of the Atlantic obliges the service to be, BA proposes to have passengers not only stop but deplane and clear US Customs and Immigration at Shannon. This will either be a smugglers’ paradise or a variable delay mechanism to further depreciate the service for the time-conscious business traveller.

According to the various flying blogs, BA has dictated that the landing back at London City can only be made by senior pilots. Great. So what they’re offering is a landing that’s so fraught they’ll only allow their most experienced pilots to fly it - and then insist they do it after a peak-time departure from JFK and at the end of an eight-hour transatlantic flight.

And all this to avoid an hour in a cab - which the business traveller will still have to do at the other end anyway!

The whole thing sounds to me like a marketing plan drawn up by a junior co-pilot wanting to get ahead.

Is it worth the gamble?

I have the curious distinction of being a former BA employee and also someone who, in later employment, was asked to take a pay cut “to save the company”.

Based on my experience I recommend that before agreeing to work for a month without pay, BA employees find out what happens to Mr Walsh if his stratagem fails and the company goes under. Compare the situation he’ll be in with the one that they’ll be in and then decide if they want to gamble a month’s pay.

I didn’t take the pay cut my boss asked for; the company went down and I had a difficult 9 months keeping up with my bills. My former boss retired to the south of France with his secretary and a very comfortable pension.

Buddy, have you got dime?

As previously reported when Mr Walsh warned that BA was in a fight for survival, he felt it necessary to add that this time he really meant what he said. I believe that’s because the intended audience wasn’t the staff at all but the government which he wants to let him create an anti-passenger cartel with American Airlines.

It’s always wise to look behind the immediate message when Mr Walsh issues a press release. Remember the fanfare with which the CEO announced that he was foregoing his salary in July? Today it’s announced he’s not going to draw his bonus this year as well - that’ll be three years in a row.

But hold on. Three years ago he didn’t take a bonus because he’d also accepted full responsibility for the Terminal 5 fiasco which was reputed to have claimed the company £32 million. Last year the results were so bad he didn’t qualify for his bonus, so why make a fuss about this being the third year in a row?

In any case, what he didn’t tell you until the Annual Report came out was that he got a 6% pay increase last year which took his monthly salary cheque to a belt-tightening £61,916!

The really good news for Mr Walsh is that if he meets the targets (set by one W. Walsh, of course) in three years time he’ll qualify for a long term shares scheme which will pay him £1.1million in 2012.

So in that context giving up £61,000 in July (which will be worth something like £37,800 in his pocket) seems quite modest.

Hopefully he didn’t read this morning’s newspaper which reported that he and his cabin staff earn twice as much as their counterparts at Virgin - but maybe you can’t believe everything you read in the papers.

Pensioners, recently denied the Staff Travel perk they thought they’d earned by accepting modest salaries over the years, might ask whether an annual salary of £743,000.00 isn’t more than enough for a Chief Executive who says he can’t do anything to influence his most important market, the business traveller? Should we not be paying someone who can?

Mr Walsh talks to the government

Why does Mr Walsh need to mention that his warnings about the end of BA etc are not just posturing or scaremongering? That sounds like the boy who’s cried wolf before and who’s not taken seriously any more.

Twice now he’s been denied his merger with AA - a merger that would serve nobody but BA and AA and do immeasurable harm to the true interests of passengers.

Could his message of impending doom really be aimed at the governments to whom he’s pleading once again to be allowed to form a cosy cartel which would control up to 65% of the traffic between a host of UK and American cities?

BA’s commercial management is a shambles. As I’ve noted before, Gatwick-New York is axed after 12 months; London-Jeddah re-introduced after a gap of four years. This sort of panic marketing wouldn’t work on a car boot stall and has no place in a modern airline.

Right now Air France/KLM sales teams are blitzing - doubling up tactical sales teams to ensure their regular clients choose their services whenever they can. At the same time BA is cutting, routes, staff, service - because that’s all it can do.

At this moment the smartest thing BA could do would be to hand the entire Heathrow operation over to a handling agency as they’ve done at almost every other airport in the world, and spend the money they’ll save hiring a sales team. Herding people needs no special skill, salesmen are a breed.

Waste of space

As we all know there lies, damn lies and statistics.

And instead of getting on with encouraging its staff to do more, better and costing less to help it out of its current predicament of flying fewer people to fewer places less often, the airline has devoted a large chunk of one page of its staff rag, BA News, to explaining why Virgin’s £64m profit is almost exactly the same as BA’s £401m loss.

Anyone who’s dealt with accountants knows how figures can be presented to reflect different faces, and for sure BA’s accounts wallahs wore out many quill pens making the £401m loss seem as little as possible - that’s what they’re paid for.

It isn’t the profit or loss that seems to matter - it’s the mindset in BA that bothers to spend time and money examining how Sir Richard managed to post a £64m profit when all they could rise to was a whacking loss. The message they convey says, "it’s OK we’re not doing as badly as it looks" - which is hardly an incentive to work harder for less.

To be fair elsewhere the CEO repeats how bad the trading environment is - but says little about how he plans to tackle it other than by paying fewer people less money. Taken to its extreme this could be the complete salvation, mothball all the aircraft, fire the staff and reduce the company’s outgoings to nil. That’s taken care of the loss then.

I repeat again, if Mr Walsh can’t get the airline into profit, then he should make way for someone who can.

Elsewhere in the paper, space is given to a self-congratulatory blub from Albion Idrizi, Commercial Manager, Kosovo and Albania who brags that he recently managed to give away two free tickets organised by the British Embassy in Albania. The letter from the ambassador "hopes that the publicity justified the donation".

Apart from the consummate sales skill Mr Idrizi shows in managing to give away two tickets (no doubt there was stiff competition from at least half of the IATA airlines in Albania) the story shows how criteria have lapsed. In BA, up to 1979 at least, we had to prove beforehand the publicity we would gain from any "trade exchange". I know because that was one of my department’s jobs. Now they only have to "hope".

Finally a footnote to reassure pensioners who are used to getting the bum’s rush from Hilary Brayfield or Clare Hatchwell (before she was elevated from Staff Travel) that rudeness is alive and well in BA.

In the latest BA News a staff member writes to complain that because BA is selling last-minute upgrades into Business class at the airport, she found she was stuck in Peasant Class despite having paid the premium standby fare which cost her three times the normal rate.

She points out quite reasonably that unless the reservations system shows that Business Class is practically empty, it’s not worth staff bothering to fork out the rip-off standby fare.

The reply from Janine Sparks, Rewards Consultant basically says "no-one forced you pay the higher rate, it’s your own fault." With that attitude perhaps Ms Sparks should be a candidate for Staff Travel Manager.

Honour and responsibility

So Mr Walsh is going to forgo £51,000 - the salary (without bonus) that he struggles by on each month - as propitiation for leading British Airways into the worst loss of its history.

Not a small part of the record loss must be laid at the fiasco of T5 and its aftermath. According to the CEO, the responsibility for that failure lay with him. The cost to him of that failure? He declined his bonus and demanded the heads of two junior directors. Well that’s alright then.

Failure in the real world impinges directly on those responsible, but not in British Airways. Perhaps football clubs (which shed managers after half a dozen lost matches) are a bit too real-world for a realistic comparison, but do you imagine that Sir Terry Leahy will still head up Tesco if it posts the equivalent of a £400m loss?

Of course the airline has its team of spin doctors, wordsmiths who’ll put a positive gloss on Armageddon if asked. They decreed that the £400m loss was primarily due to the totally unexpected rise in the cost of fuel and the loss of its premium class passengers to other airlines.

That’ll be the same fuel that Virgin, working in the same market as British Airways, had to buy. They’ll be the same premium class passengers who like to travel from airport terminals not shopping malls and on the same aircraft as their baggage.

That’ll be the Virgin that in the same year posted a £64 million profit.

But is it wise to blame the cost of fuel? The implication is that whilst Virgin’s economists bought wisely, BA’s economists bought forward when the fuel price was at its peak, in other words, it’s someone else’s fault.

Taking the blame is a matter of honour. When his Foreign office staff failed to warn Lord Carrington that Argentina might invade the Falklands, he resigned. Can we expect the resignation of anyone in BA? Who knows, but don’t bet on it being the CEO.

Why BA must not merge

It should surprise no-one that pensioners’ main concerns about the possible merger between BA and Iberia (and the additional possibility that BA becomes a Spanish company) are the effect such a change will have on their pensions and whether the change in nationality will place the pension schemes in jeopardy. The Pensioner Trustees are reported to be investigating the question but nothing official has yet been published except that the Chairman of Trustees (who, quite amazingly, is also the man leading the merger negotiations) won't answer the question.

But step back. Why does BA really want to merge? Forget all the spin, the reason is that the airline has abandoned the basics of trade in a free market and seeks only the refuge of failure.

The fact is that since BA has abandoned any pretence of a sales force, the only tool it has to affect its sales performance is the Easyjet/Ryanair tool - seat price - conveyed via the Internet.

So what happens when selling gets tough? BA has so denuded its trading arsenal that it has only three options, 1) spend money on advertising (which is only a promotional tool, not a selling one), 2) spend money on PR (trying to get more favourable mentions in the "free" press - another promotional device), or 3) reduce the price of its product.

As a result, BA’s sales performance in recent years has been pathetic and the airline has declined in every respect except its own self-praise. How many major cities in Australia and New Zealand does the world's favourite airline serve? For those with long memories who recall services to Auckland, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney think again. BA serves just Sydney. If you want to fly from London - and a handful of other cities around the UK - to Australasia, Emirates offers you flights to Sydney, Auckland, Christchurch, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. What commercial potential does Emirates see in serving all those cities that BA doesn't?

Recently I travelled to Korea. British Airways doesn't even serve one of Asia's dynamo economies. My flights on KLM and Air France were full. On the same days, BA to Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo (the nearest BA connection points)had seats to spare, especially in Club class.

Take yet another example. Last year BA abandoned its last non-London route to the USA - Manchester to New York. Its "excuse" was that the route was "too competitive". The result is that now American carriers have a monopoly on the routes.

In this situation, since it has discard the means to compete, the only other option BA has is to reduce the competition - which is the real reason it is desperate to merge with Qantas, American, Iberia and practically any other airline that will consider taking on its Pensions Black Hole - now reputed to be £3 billion! If that is so, what assets does BA have that exceed that liability in value?

Be clear, this has absolutely nothing to do with improving either the cost or quality of air travel for the customers, though it might mean a legal regime less favourable to the interests of pensioners.

Unfortunately for BA and the other carriers involved, laws exist in many countries to stop big companies ganging together to fix prices and the supply of the product - which is what the airlines want to do and why they are seeking to have those laws, which are there to protect consumers’ interests, waived or relaxed in their favour.

Throughout the present financial crisis, the press and TV have been inundated with comments from businessmen, financial NGOs and members of the public who did more than a school term of Economics without the prefix "Home", who are demanding that the governments start behaving like ordinary people and not profligate gods.

The same should be demanded of companies working in the open market, as BA is supposed to have done since 1973.

That means matching your product and price to the market’s needs (the classic definition of marketing), advertising and promoting the product to the buyers (the classic definition of Sales Promotion) and selling more of it at the highest achievable price using the most effective means available (that’s Sales).

What that doesn’t mean is giving it away at a lower price than your competitors (and trying to make up the shortfall by stealth, charging for baggage, food, drink and access to the toilets).

Selling, especially to the business market which is identifiable and accessible, (a market BA is evidently incapable of reaching since its Premium class service is suffering most at present) is done by presentation, persuasion and personality. But of course, BA doesn’t have a sales team.

Instead it tries to hide amongst the woes of the industry - pointing out that no-one's doing better etc etc. Rubbish. What BA needs is a leader who can inspire in the way that George C Scott playing Patton in the eponymous film does in the opening sequence. BA must go out and make sure it's Air France, Iberia, KLM and all its competitors that fail and BA that succeeds. But where is that person?

And until it finds him or her we should all worry about our pensions.

What BA must definitely NOT be allowed to do is to merge with other carriers unless it can show by more than a PR-spun release from "our Willie" that it is in the customers’ interests that it should be allowed to take place. And regardless of any blarney emanating from Waterside, that means not waiving any anti-trust or anti-competition law. Allowing BA to merge May keep Mr Walsh in a job but it won't solve BA's long-term problem.

What BA must remember - as the UK car manufacturers had to learn the hard way - is that it doesn't have a god-given right to exist. If BA cannot find someone to lead it out of the malaise the present management has taken it, then it should be sold to a business and management with sufficient energy, expertise, ability and basic nous that can. If that means that our main carrier isn't British then we shall get used to it - just as we've got used to driving cars made by foreign companies.

Spanish/London Airways

The news that British Airways is considering becoming a Spanish company after its merger with Iberia and the UK government's statement that it would not stand its way may not have any ramifications for BA pensioners but many of the 47,000 would like some reassurance.


What protection does Spanish law give pensioners? Does the UK government's protection, limited though it is, extend to pensioners of a Spanish company? Can BA, under Spanish law, do with impunity what ABAP managed to stop it doing as a British company and manipulate the pension funds for its own benefit?


No-one expects the unelected Liaison Council to be awake to this situation - after all someone has to write to them raising the issue first and then they have to decide that it's important enough to pass on to BA, but why is ABAP, the only organisation dedicated to defending our pensions, not asking these questions?

And still BA dissembles.

Why can British Airways not be completely open and frank?

Touchdown for Spring 2009 has a four-pages article described as "the main changes" which ST09 will mean. On the front page the article is billed as "everything you need to know ... about the new policy" and Clare Hatchwell (now described as Customer Relations and Staff Travel Manager) gushes that "one of the key challenges has been communicating the new policy to out 100,000-strong customer base to make sure people are aware of the changes." If this is what Ms Hatchwell regards as communicating the changes to 47,000 retired "customers" she is either deluded or incompetent.

Nowhere in the four pages is the change which has so raised the ire of so many pensioners - the imposition in retrospect of a limit on the period for which they are entitled to Staff Travel - mentioned at all. Actually that's not precisely true - there's a brief mention of LoS [Length of Service] in the section written by the unctuous Robert James in a self-serving piece devoted to the unelected Liaison Council but there's no explanation.

As the Working Group recorded in its Final Report, BA isn’t going to be allowed to forget this injustice - it will be referred to whenever the opportunity arises; for example, if Mr Walsh tries to enrol the support of pensioners for his Third Runway campaign again, he’ll find that this time our support will have a price.

Unlike the unelected Liaison Council which has completely given up any pretence at fighting for fair treatment of all pensioners - in their words "we can only accept that ST09 will be introduced" - the Staff Travel Watch, organised on behalf of all pensioners worldwide, is going to be a problem for BA that won’t go away.

As useless as the ....

This common epithet enjoys a number of conclusions, mostly ribald and unrepeatable in polite society like this. However, as a result of recent meetings attended by members of the ABAP committee, a new and most apposite conclusion is available to BA pensioners - “As useless as the unelected Liaison Committee”.

This body claims to represent the interests of BA pensioners. It does nothing of the sort.

It cannot. Not only does it not attempt to do the excellent social work of the Retired Staff Association, but it is unelected and imposed on us by British Airways. The appointment of the unelected Chairperson, Mrs Sigrid Mapp, who, speaking on the record (literally) at the ABAP AGM introduced herself as “German, and proud of it”, and the remainder of the lap-dogs, is overseen by a BA gauleiter, named recently as Julie Peters.

Julie Peters is a remarkable lady. Before I knew her name I described her as a BA Manager. Capt Chris Hodgkinson of the unelected Liaison Council rushed to correct me - and I will always admit my errors of fact - stating that she is nothing more than a “clerical assistant”. Clerical Assistants have obviously come on a lot since my days in BA because Ms Peters is charged with ensuring that, in selecting people for admission to the body, the unelected Liaison Council observes all the laws and regulations governing such appointments. Either the laws and regulations are contained on the inside flap of a book of matches or Ms Peters is some remarkable clerical assistant.

This is, of course, a charade. Ms Peters, directly or via her BA handler, is there to ensure that only people agreeable to British Airways are allowed to be selected.

In fact, the unelected Liaison Council already goes a long way to meet those requirements itself. As a long-re-selected member, the unctuous Robert James, described it in Touchdown last year, the existing members vet each self-nominee to ensure (as he so precisely described it) “minimum standards” are maintained.

Call me old-fashioned but I would have thought that the only standard a body representing BA pensioners needed was that its members were BA pensioners. Was this the way Mr James acted when he was employed? Can someone who knew him then tell us? And why is there such a preponderance of former Trade Union reps on it?

Ironically it wasn’t always so. The appointment system only came in six or so years ago because so few people cared about the non-work of the Council that they didn’t bother to vote. Now the unelected Liaison Councillors behave more despicably than a seedy private members’ club. In last Autumn’s Touchdown the unctuous Robert James announced that “The Selection Panel (ie themselves) have re-appointed the four retiring members, (Allam, Jukes, Larkin and Mapp) for another three years”.

-o-

I always have to be careful talking about Germans because two of my great-uncles were blown to bits by German soldiers during WW1 and a Belgian relative was murdered by the Gestapo in 1942, all of which can leave one a bit biased.

So I defer to an expert. Prof Ervin Staub of the University of Massachusetts described a trait amongst all Germans, evident, he says, since at least the 18th Century, of a national instinct to respect authority unswervingly. Certainly our "Proud German", Mrs Mapp conforms to Professor Staub's description by her unflinching obeisance to her masters in BA. As you will see, under her leadership, the unelected, self-important toads simply comply with the wishes of British Airways. She even put her name to Walsh's despicable suggestion that our pensions were at risk if we didn't agree to the demolishing of Sipson for the convenience of London Airways.

So who are these paragons of wisdom and enlightenment, unelected Councillors who care so much about your interests?

According to Touchdown, as well as Frau Mapp they are Mike Potter, Terry Jukes, Nigel Allam, David Larkin, Harry Heap, Robert James, Tony Flowers, Win Thompson, Christopher Hodgkinson and Stuart Scott - names to be remembered.

And what do these recipients of the BA Christmas sandwich actually do? Do they seek out ways that pensioners’ lives can be improved? Do they initiate ideas for “forging a close relationship with pensioners”? Does their adherence to “minimum standards” enable them to present their masters with new ways for BA to recognise the part pensioners played in growing BA?

As they say in Manchester, “do they heck as like”. The answer to all those questions is a big fat NO.

Says who? Actually the unelected members of the Liaison Council said so. In recent talks with ABAP, they admitted that they do nothing except act as a Post Office and Filtration plant, passing on to British Airways those concerns raised by pensioners that they deem appropriate to bother the airline with.

Many people would agree that if Clare Hatchwell, Hilary Brayfield and all the other BA factotums had the courtesy to answer their emails and letters, we wouldn’t need a Post Office and that in its role of Filtration plant the unelected Liaison Council seems to have trapped all the muck already.

Whilst some pensioners enjoy the social activities organised by the RSA, the fact is that there only two things which concern every pensioner, their pension - which is always the most important - and their staff travel - which has less importance as time passes and the thrill of standing by for two days or more whilst newly-appointed staff and their six-monthly partners are boarded loses its appeal.

What has the Liaison Council done to improve those things which matter to all of us?

In 1990 (not long after its inauguration) ABAP took BA (who wanted to mess with the pension fund to its benefit and your detriment) to the High Court and won. If you want to read the detail the relevant Newsbrief is available on the ABAP website. Why did the then-elected Liaison Council not act to defend our pensions at that time? Did the people who forged ABAP do it because they needed a break from gardening or the golf course? No, they organised themselves because even in 1990 the Liaison Council was a supine, fawning rabble of BA loyalists preaching loudly “my airline, right or wrong” - ignoring the fact that Carl Schurz actually said “My country, right or wrong, if right to be kept right, if wrong to be set right.”.

Since then and through various legal fights, ABAP has become de facto the pensioner’s negotiator with BA Pensions. The unelected Liaison Council is briefed by BA Pensions occasionally and no doubt the assembled great minds mumble their assent and approval and pass the Lincoln Creams round again.

So, if they’ve abrogated any responsibility for our pensions what about their valiant defence of the other thing which concerns pensioners, Staff Travel?

Well, we all know the answer to that. To do their best to protect and retain the Staff Travel pensioners were told and thought they were going to get in their twilight years, the brave , principled members of the unelected Liaison Council sat down round BA’s table, took BA’s pens and signed their names to an agreement which bound them to secrecy - specifically agreeing not to discuss Staff Travel with the very people whose interests they were supposed to be defending!

Unfortunately pensioners have no remedy. What most people would like to do, vote the entire kennel of BA poodles out, can’t be done because they can go on re-appointing themselves until Hell freezes over.

Just for a moment, imagine what would have happened had that team of unprincipled time-servers led by the proud German, Sigrid Mapp, hadn’t been so ready to scribble their names? If they’d had the guts or the moral decency to tell BA where to shove their infamous Confidentiality Agreement, BA couldn’t have persisted with the fiction that “pensioners’ representatives have agreed”.

But these are the people who’ve been cozying up to ABAP recently - and be quite clear, these meetings have been called for by the unelected Liaison Council, not ABAP. Why?

The fact is that are beginning to realise they don’t have a job to do. As I said at the beginning, they’re as useless as ...

Could this be the reason that they’ve been trying to get involved with the Pensioner Contacts? Almost universally Pensioner Contacts do a splendid, and often forgotten job looking after their areas much as old fashioned vicars used to fulfill their social responsibilities to their parishioners. Almost all PCs are also supportive of ABAP's Staff Travel Campaign - support for which we are most grateful.

So why is the Liaison Council trying to muscle in on PCs with unelected LC members like Nigel Allam doing his very best to find any reason for the incumbent Organisers to be dismissed? His latest ploy is that unless you have a computer you can’t be doing the job properly. Why is a quarter page of valuable Touchdown space is given over to the LC’s pathetic attempt to be the PC focus? Could this be why they’ve been trying to garner influence with the Overseas Pensioner Contacts? One or two like Mike Austin, Plenipotentiary for half of Cyprus and his sidekick - who is so ashamed of his/her part they will only be known as “the Oracle” - has congratulated the unelected Liaison Council on agreeing to ST09, without appearing to give a tuppenny damn about those pensioners who are neither fortunate enough to live in Cyprus nor able to take a standby trip there now.

On every count and by every measure the unelected Liaison Council has failed.

Sadly although ABAP’s constitution claims it speaks for all pensioners, in reality its principle focus is those who receive a pension under APS and NAPS. Yet, as the recent Staff Travel Campaign Working Group (established under the aegis of ABAP and with the sometimes reluctant endorsement of its Committee) showed, its objectives are supported by pensioners all over the world. Hundreds of Canadians, scores of Americans, most of whom earned much less attractive pension deals from BA and its forebears, sent in their contributions and voiced their support for ABAP. Why? Because they have no other voice - the unelected Liaison Council simply won’t stand up for them.

So what can be done?

This site will campaign to publicise the misdeeds and general uselessness of the unelected Liaison Council until either the airline throws out all the fawning toads and makes it a truly representative body to which access is only by democratic election again (a much less expensive process now they have the Internet), or BA concedes that its concern for pensioners is a complete sham and closes it down for ever.

Or maybe ABAP can be persuaded to take over the Liaison Council’s responsibilities? BA wouldn’t have such an easy ride and even the most BA-compliant ABAP Committee member would be unable to sign a Confidentiality Agreement. For their part pensioners all over the world would find themselves with a champion not afraid to stand up to the BA bullies, a body prepared to be proactive and initiate activities in the pensioners’ interests and, above all, an Association led by a democratically elected Committee.

Until that, or something like it, happens the gutless members of the unelected Liaison Council remain as irrelevant and as unnecessary as His Holiness’s body parts and we shall go on saying so.

By the way, some years ago and with the best of intentions, the Chairman of ABAP, Dayne Markham, applied to become a member of the unelected Liaison Council. He was rejected. They never tell you why, but after all, they do have to maintain “minimum standards”.

British Airways Staff Travel

Please comment on any aspect of this topic.

And please note, only comments which properly and clearly identify the writer will be published.

British Airways Pensions

Please comment on any aspect of this topic.

And please note, only comments which properly and clearly identify the writer will be published.

Welcome

Blog or Forum - what's the difference?

Perhaps the most important difference is that whilst new topics can be initiated by any forum member, blog subjects are created by the blog owner - or people he chooses to invite to create posts.

On the other hand, commenting on blog posts is much easier.

All posts and comments are moderated; not to limit discussion or opinion but to keep the owner out of court! Anything published on the Internet is subject to the same laws as publication in a newspaper on TV or radio or even stuck on a noticeboard. Moderation of the blog is not a matter of editing what is written; posts and comments will either be published or they won't appear at all.

Some blogs allow comments to be made anonymously, but on this blog you have to identify yourself. Like its members, ABAP is only concerned with two things, BA Pensions and BA pensioners' staff travel, both topics which deserve serious even scathing comments. But if you're not prepared to identify yourself when writing down your views, perhaps you should reconsider what you want to say.

Initially this is the only post. So that people can comment on the main topics with which ABAP is concerned, I've created two blank postings, any aspect of which can be commented on at once.

And please note, only comments which properly and clearly identify the writer will be published.