Word: walsh
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Fired up by the math, Walsh (a former Aer Lingus pilot who landed the top job there in 2001) quickly got to work cutting the figures down to size. On his first Monday in the BA job, he set about reaching a deal with trade unions to rub out the pension deficit over the next decade through one-off cash injections and changes to employee benefits. Two months later, "Slasher" - as Walsh was known at the Irish carrier for culling a third of its staff while rescuing it from the brink - went to work on BA's head count. Hundreds...
...price-fixing penalties wiped at least some of the gloss off all that. According to the OFT, scheming with rival Virgin over the level of fuel surcharges started months before Walsh took control of BA. As soon as the OFT informed BA in mid-2006 that it was investigating the company, the airline cooperated with the authority's investigations. (Virgin, whose legal team first contacted the OFT about the scheming once it got wind of it, should escape any fine as a result.) Still, it's hardly reassuring that staff at BA thought it a smart idea to collude with...
...ugly dispute left both parties admitting that "a fresh start is needed to the relationship," BA said in a statement issued at the time. That will take a while. The roots of January's squabble over pay levels were buried in agreements drawn up in the '90s, years before Walsh arrived. He acknowledges: "You don't change the way you do business with long-established trade-union relationships overnight...
There are signs, though, that change is under way. While his predecessors kept union negotiations at arm's length, union leaders say, Walsh's direct involvement helped speed up a resolution. With Walsh and his union counterpart sequestered in a London hotel, says Brendan Gold, T&G's national secretary for civil air transport, "serious negotiations were done." Ahead of BA's move next year into the new $8.5 billion Heathrow Terminal 5, the airline persuaded thousands of ground staff to agree to change their practices. So, while an aircraft tug driver used to leave work before...
Things won't stay quiet for long, though. For all the challenges of the past couple of years, BA is perhaps yet to face its biggest test of the Walsh era. The airline's shares have plunged by almost a third since February, owing partly to worries that liberalization of the transatlantic market next year will cut into its profits. Under current rules, only BA, Virgin and the U.S. carriers American Airlines and United Airlines can fly to and from the U.S. via Heathrow. For BA, that restricted access has been a gold mine. With the industry in meltdown...