Oh Willie, You're Not So Fine

Oh dear. In a week where the union, Unite, launched a legal action against BA in order to try and stop the imposition of new contracts, the news has just got worse.

Far worse.

BA's results to the end of September showed a £292m loss - far greater than had been predicted by most analysts. Revenue was unsurprisingly down by 13.7% and Willie Walsh, BA's clueless CEO, could only forlornly point to the fact that there is a recession on - a real 'no sh*t Sherlock' moment. Lord Sugar would surely have slapped him about the face for saying so, not least as Ryan Air had only released their figures a week before with excellent profits buoyed by a 40% decrease in fuel costs over the same period.

If that was factored into BA's results as well, it makes these results not just grim but catastrophic.

Confidence in the airline was not helped in the period as Walsh himself was involved in the high profile launch of what many believe to be a 'white elephant' new all-business class service between London's City Airport and New York, carrying just 32 passengers and stopping in Ireland on the way to refuel. Given much of BA's woes have stemmed from a dramatic decline in business class sales on other services, this seemed like either monumental madness or callous hubris in the face of the sacrifices made by staff in a desperate bid to save costs. It just seems a huge waste of money on a service almost certain to make a loss in the short and medium term - if ever - given two previous attempts to have a business class only service went belly up in happier times about a year ago and at least they had more passenger capacity and flew non-stop to their destinations.

I really am stumped over BA's strategy. They continue to just try to reduce costs and do the same thing when the industry has moved on. They are caught between offering premium services but trying to compete at the budget end and are failing at both.

I also find it hard to believe that shareholders grimly keep the faith with a CEO who is so clearly out of his depth, obsessed with using his dwindling funds to buy another struggling airline, Iberian, as his last, desperate and hopeless fling of the dice.

He really needs a strategy that hangs together before he spends so much wasteful money. At this rate he needs to horde as much as he can as BA is going nowhere fast.