The Buck Stops With Me
April 14th, 2008
It hasn’t been as it was envisaged.
The opening of a new terminal at the world’s most famous hub has been famed for notorious problems.
Delays, IT infrastructure problems, baggage bottlenecks, missing baggage, sending baggage to Milan for sorting to the recent reports of even burning baggage that cannot be reconciled with its rightful owners are the headlines that have plagued London Heathrow Airport’s new Terminal 5.
There have even been incidents where BA staff have walked “off the job” in frustration at the troubles they face in not being able to do their job.
While British Airways has highlighted the woes will cost anywhere in the region of £16m, some analysts have pegged the cost at closer to £40m or even more.
Image courtesy of The Telegraph
Already, the hounds are out, baying for blood. The blood of the CEO, Willie Walsh.
Getting rid of Walsh will not solve the problems the airline currently faces. Any successor would face the same problems Walsh does now.
The pilots union BALPA, are still unhappy with the way the new offshoot airline, OpenSkies will operate, staff morale in the company is not exactly boding well while at the same time, the airline battles to keep check of its cost base, which it has thus far managed to slash under the previous guidance of former CEO, Rod Eddington.
In an interview with the BBC, Walsh was unequivocal that “the buck stops with me and I’m determined to make this work” and that it was “not our finest hour” in view of the calamities passengers faced on the opening day.
Equally important is BAA’s role in this litany of errors at this flagship terminal. Where BA has been left to face angry customers, behind the scenes, BAA is being lambasted for its awful simulations that BA had relied so heavily upon.
The simulations during testing did not account for events such baggage belts breaking down and the IT systems redundancy was clearly not as robust as envisaged by both BA and BAA, who jointly hold responsibility for the development of PC workstations around the terminal. It’s symptomatic of a simple system overload- too many network users doing too many (variable) things causing it to crash.
Neither is the system geared up (yet) to cope with the 12,000 bags an hour that BAA had vaunted so much to the media. Add to that people checking in and adding bags to the Fast Bag Drop areas in the terminal and the result was a classic system bottleneck.
Perhaps at an operational level, there are indeed personnel that need to be relieved of their duties for poor management decisions - blaming the public face of BA in Walsh may just prove to be a rash move, although there are very few in the City who believe he will be jettisoned any time soon if at all.
Removing Walsh may just be another mistake.
Sphere: Related ContentEntry Filed under: Air Transport, Air Travel, Airlines, Airports, Aviation, BA, BAA, Boeing 787, British Airways, Willie Walsh
5 Comments Add your own
1. Chris Wallace | April 14th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Reminds me of UA’s fancy baggage-handling system at DEN that never worked right and was eventually removed.
Growing pains happen. I’m not a fan of LHR, period, but fortunately I normally connect at FRA since I am a Star Alliance man.
2. Aurora | April 14th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
This hugely embarrassing screw up is a heaven sent opportunity for BALPA. One wonders if Walsh won’t be forced to compromise on Open Skies down the road to keep his job?
3. Jacobin777 | April 14th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Being a OneWorld Koolaider and someone who’s dealt with BA/BAA baggage handling problems even in the best of times, along with the BAA I think WW is partially to blame.
The smartest thing to do was to start with a few flights..MAX. Bring that up to a dozen or so in a few days and let the “kinks” work out. Then “ramp” up as one is more confident in the system.
While I can’t fault WW for not having the system work, this decision (or lack of decision) of shifting to T-5 so quickly without testing the system “in vivo” SQUARELY lies on WW. He’s been hyping T-5 since he took the helm of BA….
While I don’t believe he’ll be fired because of this, I’m a bit disappointed by his lack of foresight.
4. david cavanagh | April 14th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
WW is all talk and no action,iv’e always said,if you rush a job and cut courners,then it will come back to to bite you,later on,just like a white lie,and that’s is exactly what has happend to WW. Serve’s him right for putting profits first and putting a well done mark on his CV,for what excellance? not a chance.
5. BCal | April 14th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I have heard from many sources that partly due to budgets and cost cutting BA staff did not have sufficient training in order to familiarise themselves with T5 and the baggage handling equipment. Saving a million or two maximum in staff time/costs for training was a false economy bearing in mind the GBP 16 million (or GBP 40 million) that BA must now pay in compensation, not to mention the damage to the BA brand.
I attended two of the T5 trials and often thought to myself did the BAA/BA supervisors etc know exactly what they were testing? There were many people with clipboards and stopwatches, and even more observers, wandering around and things did not go to plan even on the trials. Did they take any notice of the problems that came to light, and comments made by people on the trials? Maybe BAA forced BA to transfer all operations in two big moves. Certainly, with the experience gained at HKG and other new airports it would have been better to move operations in small stages to iron out any problems that surfaced, rather than one big move and meltdown.
Had the opening of T5 been a success, WW would have taken all the praise and glory. It was a complete ball$ up, yet it seems that only words come from his mouth and little, if any, action. WW is paid GBP 51,200 per month and I cannot understand how a highly paid director could not even come up with any contingency plan if the baggage systems etc did not meet expectations when T5 opened.
As has been said, getting rid of WW will not solve the problems, as the BA board would only appoint another CEO who might be unable to solve the legacy. What is required is a complete overhaul of the BA management and board.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed