Free Willie

Oh will someone put poor Willie Walsh out of his misery.

I blogged last month about an article in BA's HighLife magazine about how videoconferencing was 'perceived' by users as not to replace the benefits of flying to meetings. It was a piece of wanton propaganda as clearly they had taken slim evidence from middle managers and not looked at the issue from the point of view of the recession, the cost, high management's viewpoint about extensive unnecessary travel within their companies and the environmental issues. It basically said that videoconferencing and the like did not replace business travel - a sweeping statement.

Poor Willie - after just launching a new Business Class-only service for a £5,300 flexible round trip from London City Airport to New York on which only 32 people can travel, he asserts business people only fly because they have to. That much may be true, but if they have to travel, what on earth would compel them to take such a flight, at such a cost when it has to stop at Shannon on the way as it cannot get off the ground with a full load of fuel to make the full trip? I would argue, that long before a businessman would consider such a trip, they would have exhausted the far cheaper options out of the main airports by all other airlines, assuming that videoconferencing does not cut the mustard for their purposes at the start.

It seems he misses his own point. Such a service is pure luxury and the domain of the super rich firms who have no regard for money - like City banks. While we may bleat about bonuses, the range of travel options to such elite are ultra-luxurious whether they lose money or make it, good times or bad. That service really is only for the too-rich and stupid. The fact it uses Concorde's old flight number is a terrible lack of knowledge as to why Concorde was meant to be effective - it got there faster than anything else. This service arrives after normal ones.

Two major attempts in the last few years to tackle the Business Class-only market failed dismally at a time when there was more money around. This really is a dreadful use of BA's valuable resources at a time when staff are being squeezed for every penny of saving and customers are having parts of the offering withdrawn and being sold back to them at premiums.

Willie really is not doing a good job for his airline.

Is Willie a Willy?

So there is a recession on and a credit crunch. Two ‘all business class’ airlines failed in the last year, both did not use ‘hub’ airports and carried limited amounts of passengers to the US.

I used Silverjet and I loved the service – flying from Luton with a great purpose-built terminal of its own, the service was great for a £1,000 return flight to New York. I was not the only one to think so – as I bumped into Martin Johnson’s knee and Mark Blundell too on two separate trips.

But it crashed, so to speak, and burnt. Even with a nice big Boeing, it did not attract the customers and Luton is one of the more accessible of airports with lower cost, nearer parking – Silverjet offered valet parking service too.

Now BA has launched a new service. From the short take off airport at the City, it has a specially converted Airbus 318 to carry only 100 passengers in total and only 32 in equivalent flat beds of Club Class to New York. Ah, there is a catch too. The A318 cannot take off on the short runway with a full load of fuel that would get it to New York and so it has to refuel on the way which means a stop at somewhere like Shannon.

I have criticised Willie Walsh, CEO of BA, before for his dreadful lack of strategy and his series of knee jerk reactions to the market conditions. But this folly in the face of tried and tested failures in the same sector will go down badly with all those staff who have taken early retirement, worked harder or taken a salary holiday in order to pay for his whims. This is a real humdinger of a poor idea and it frankly deserves to fail in the face of much better thought through services by smaller companies that he harried to put out of business.

Easyjet have criticised it also as a shuttle service for rich bankers which sort of puts it into perspective as we all are now commanded to hate such people by our Supreme Leader who has now issued laws and ultimatums to bankers and all Tories for causing the financial mess we are in. Poor old Willie has taken a good aim at his foot and blasted at it with gusto. Perhaps the resultant pain will wake him up.

At a time when BA has called for an extra £600m in cash and tried nonsensical cuts to try and compensate for the horrendous losses of last year, this was one investment that could have waited or have been binned.

But nope Willie is a real willy, for sure.