The latest financial performance from BA simply underlines what has been obvious to almost everyone else – that they are not competitive, are over-staffed and are way too employee focused at the cost of what passengers want. Like KODAK wakening up 10 years too late to the digital revolution and trying to sell us film when the demand for film had long gone, BA missed their flight many years ago. The future of passenger airways was led by Southwest Airlines back in the 1972. Peanuts and smiles all round, they declared that their main competitor was the car. So Southwest set about structuring their costs and performance to compete with the car.
37 years later Southwest Airlines have led the way in low cost air travel, world-class customer service and consistent profits. Read their latest website message from their CEO Gary Kelly http://www.southwest.com/about_swa/?ref=abtsw_fgn does this sound like Willie Walsh or the nasty Michael O’Leary of Ryanair? If BA want to survive they should go and ask Gary Kelly to please move from the USA to the UK to sort out BA. The result would be a British Airways with an O’Leary type cost base but with a smile and passenger focus that only Southwest have finely tuned. O’Leary copied Southwest’s business model, but not their performance for passengers. British Airways think they can buck the trend – so did KODAK!
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