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 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.

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.