A message from a premium class passenger
Walsh should listen to BA passengers and crew
and keep BA a premium airline
Subject: Email from Mamad Kashani-Akhavan regarding the
British Airways’ dispute
Dear BA shareholders/employees/passengers,
I am a frequent premium class passenger and part of a group of
determined people whose mission is to save British Airways - a
great company - from bad management.
The fact that BA is owned by many different shareholders means
that there is no one person - such as Mr Branson at Virgin - who
truly cares enough or is strong enough to stop a bad management
team from destroying the company. It is therefore vital for BA’s
passengers, employees and shareholders to work together to prevent
the destruction of British Airways.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that Mr Walsh has no
intention of settling the damaging, unnecessary and expensive
dispute with the cabin crew. The continuation of this dispute -
which should have been resolved many months ago - deflects
attention and scrutiny from his poor performance as BA’s chief
executive.
Since his appointment as BA’s CEO, Mr Walsh has continually
reduced the level of service that BA offers to its business and
first class passengers. He has also failed to adequately modernise
existing planes or purchase enough new planes to keep up with his
competition. This has resulted in a loss of a great number of BA’s
premium passengers to competitors such as middle eastern and far
eastern airlines. It is undeniable that BA is losing many of its
business passengers not because of the recession but as a direct
result of its management’s bad decisions.
Mr Walsh is trying hard to convince BA’s shareholders that his
alliance with other major airlines will bring BA back into
profitability. This is of course wishful thinking. He fails to
understand that reducing choice for passengers and forcing them to
pay an ever increasing price for an increasingly inferior service
will only lead to alienation of even more premium class passengers.
The only way that BA will ever become profitable is by becoming a
premier airline again and providing a superior service to its high
paying business passengers.
Mr Walsh’s management style is simple: it is either his way or
the highway. Since his appointment, he has not only continually
ignored the advise of many of BA’s highly experienced employees but
also the wishes of his own passengers. He wrongly believes that he
knows more than everyone else and has no interest in receiving
feedback from employees or passengers. In his vision for BA,
everything should be inferior and low cost including the quality of
its cabin crew. Funnily enough, he has even stopped chocolates
being offered to his first class passengers and reduced their food
portions in his obsession to cut costs! Ironically, he actually
expects - with this absurd vision - to charge and receive higher
fares from his business and first class passengers than any other
airline. As a result of his wrong decision making, BA has lost a
billion pounds in two years; enough is enough.
Kind regards
Mamad Kashani Akhavan
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