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.