The airline delivers profits, but its handling of the pilots’ strike has been lamentable
Camilla Cavendish
© Jonathan McHugh 2019
“We’ve been trying to reach you,” claims the email from British Airways. Maybe they sent a carrier pigeon. I’ve received several of these messages in the past year, when the airline has wanted to make late changes to my flight. Yet there are no missed calls. There is something about the insouciant tone of this message, the cynical contempt it expresses, that goes to the heart of this week’s pilot strikes.
The grounding of 1,700 flights on Monday and Tuesday was catastrophic for BA, financially and in terms of reputation. The planned walkouts caused untold misery to passengers. Yet BA’s management seem to be on autopilot. Their response of digging in, stripping pilots of their generous travel perks, has failed to head off the next planned strike on September 27 and seems unlikely to rescue the brand. The company may be delivering healthy profits, but it looks set to become a business school case study of reputational damage.
Even the stranglehold BA’s parent company IAG has on 55 per cent of slots at Heathrow may not be enough to retain customers who have endured tired planes, penny-pinching and call centres so unresponsive that one American passenger has suggested setting up a support group for Executive Club members trapped in mindless waits. Personally, if I have to listen once more to BA’s soothing “Flower Duet” theme tune, I fear I may spontaneously combust, leaving nothing but a smoking heap of Avios air miles.
The dispute would have been resolved by now had it been just about money. BA has offered an 11.9 per cent pay rise over three years, which it said would take some pilots to more than £200,000 a year. The problem is that staff feel as unappreciated as customers.
This is a far cry from 2009 when pilots helped the airline out by taking a pay cut, and BA’s boss Willie Walsh committed to work a month without pay. But that spirit of solidarity has evaporated since BA returned to profit, Mr Walsh has ascended the ranks of IAG, and Alex Cruz was appointed BA chief executive to keep on cost-cutting.
We customers know that airliners are cattle trucks, disguised to distract us from the essential madness of flying in a tin can far above the world. But precisely for that reason, we need the experience to be good. We don’t want to worry that the guy flying the plane might be tired and ratty because his employer has downgraded his layover hotel. We resent feeling simultaneously annoyed by having to pay for coffee that used to be free and sorry for the crew member who is having to apologise for it.
On a BA flight to Boston last year, a kind steward regularly nudged the seat of the snoring passenger in front of me, which kept over-reclining into my face. He was wonderful; but he was embarrassed by the poor service on the national carrier he used to feel proud of.
Airlines become dehumanised at their peril. At Heathrow recently, I couldn’t get the BA check-in machine to accept my e-ticket. Looking around the shiny wastes, there was no human being in sight. Eventually I found a rather senior official who checked me in, and even found me a nicer seat. “Thank goodness you were here,” I said gratefully. “I shouldn’t be,” he responded wryly. “I’m not supposed to come down here. They’d like to get rid of all of us.”
I know that Ferrovial, the owner of Heathrow, is more interested in bombarding me with luxury handbags than in helping me catch my plane. But the airline itself ought to care.
Of course, BA faces challenges in a fiercely competitive industry. While the pension deficit is no longer the defining issue it was before BA merged with Iberia, it is still a burden. There is also a gulf between newer staff who don’t have defined benefit pensions and whose pay and perks are substantially lower and their older counterparts. Plus there’s the flag carrier factor, which means that even one lost bag out of a million can make headlines. But the strategy of running the business for cash to boost shareholder returns may ultimately prove self-defeating.
The complacency is staggering. Until now, the company has been able to rely on the inertia of corporates booking transatlantic business class, which account for the bulk of profits. But charging frequent flyers to change seats is a strange way to reward loyalty, and cramming more seats into business creates a level of intimacy you might not want even if your neighbour was George Clooney. Since admitting last year that the data of 380,000 customers had been hacked, BA has never provided reassurance that it won’t happen again — or made me think that it minded.
Far from being “the world’s favourite airline”, BA shot down the Skytrax rankings of customer satisfaction between 2012 and 2018. Unless it starts to bother about people, its promised £6.5bn investment into new planes and lounges may come too late.
The most bewildering aspect of this whole saga is the company’s repeated refusal to consider the union’s demands for profit sharing. In cyclical industries, such arrangements can be a very positive way to align staff and shareholder interests. It has been a significant feature of labour settlements by US airlines in the past few years. It lets staff share in the good times, while acting as what HSBC analyst Andrew Lobbenberg calls a “shock absorber” in the bad.
All companies go through turbulence — the question is how they handle it. Right now, BA seems to be accelerating into crisis. I admire the professionalism of the pilots and like the cabin crew. But I no longer trust the company to look after them, or me.
The writer, a former head of the Downing Street policy unit, is a Harvard senior fellow
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