British Airways staff have sometimes been accused of ‘working without enthusiasm’, says Judi Bevan — but you certainly couldn’t say that of chief executive Willie Walsh
Before meeting Willie Walsh, I take a stroll round Terminal 5, marvelling at the vast, elegant haven of calm and efficiency it has become compared with the pandemonium of last March’s opening. All looks serene until I ask the nice young press officer with me whether passengers are now allowed two pieces of hand luggage.
We approach one of the check-in desks, where she politely introduces herself and asks the young woman behind it if this is indeed the case. The expression of glum insolence on the woman’s face transports me back to the Telegraph in the days when Sogat 82 ruled OK, print was set in hot metal and most of the secretarial staff were the daughters or nieces of the printers. Her eyes flicked briefly over my companion’s face. ‘Yes, they are,’ she said in a toneless voice, and went back to what she was doing.
Half an hour later, I recount this incident to Walsh, British Airways’ youthful but steely chief executive. I ask him if this is typical of what some call the BA malaise of ‘working without enthusiasm’. He denies it vigorously. ‘I don’t think so,’ he says in his strong Dublin brogue. ‘There are some people like that in any large organisation but the vast majority of people at BA are very pleasant, dedicated people. We’re typical of any big organisation.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘But the expectation on us is much higher.’
He has already pushed through many changes in working practices since he arrived at BA in 2005, but he prefers to fight his union battles in private. He has form on both sides. In his previous job at Aer Lingus, he sacked more than 2,000 people in the process of saving the Irish carrier from bankruptcy; but in earlier days there he was chief negotiator for the Irish Airline Pilots Association. Whatever the argument, Walsh is a good man to have on your side.
He has bounced into the room, pumped up with energy. His pink open-necked shirt indicates casual insouciance but his polished black lace-up shoes show the serious nature of the man. Colleagues describe him as a hard taskmaster. His peers in the industry admire his energy and determination but call him ‘detached’ and ‘unclubbable’.
Within seconds of his entry, his round blue-grey eyes lock onto mine and barely unlock for the exact hour of our conversation. Focus is something he does very well. Since the T5 furore, BA has barely been out of the headlines. Its credit rating has been downgraded to ‘junk’; protests over plans for a third Heathrow runway continue; the price-fixing scandal with Virgin rumbles on. Meanwhile, an on-off merger with Iberia of Spain nears its endgame at a time when most airlines, including BA, have plunged into losses. The recession, weak sterling and last year’s stratospheric oil prices have done their worst. ‘Intensive care’ is how the director-general of IATA recently described the industry.
BA warned earlier this year that it anticipates an operating loss of around £150 million for the year to March; 2009/10 may be no better, which may explain why some of BA’s heavily unionised staff look so glum.
Does the recession make pushing through change — a euphemism for cutting jobs and keeping down pay — any easier? ‘It’s not a question of whether it is easier, it’s critical to do it now,’ Walsh says fiercely. ‘This is a time for taking action. Some people think I am a bit blunt but if you don’t take action you are not going to be around.’
Walsh rides volatile business conditions and hostile public opinion like a rodeo performer. Why do such a difficult job? ‘I do it because I love it. I’m a long time in aviation and it has always been challenging.’
Like most of the Irish he relishes a good debate, particularly in print or on air. He plays the media well, moving deliberately towards journalists even in moments of crisis such as the chaotic T5 opening. When many would have stayed in their bunkers, Walsh went on camera and apologised. ‘People have advised me that I shouldn’t have done it, but I just felt it was the right thing. I went over there, started with the BBC and worked my way down the line of cameras.’ Later he gave a big interview to Jeff Randall on Sky. His apologies did not make the chaos vanish or the lost luggage reappear, but at least somebody was prepared to take responsibility.
Walsh learned to use the media to maximum advantage at Aer Lingus, sparring with Michael O’Leary, the notoriously combative boss of Ryanair. ‘O’Leary is a master of generating publicity for nothing,’ he says admiringly. In his early days, O’Leary had played a David-and-Goliath routine with the Irish flag carrier; but by the time the Twin Towers came down in 2001 and Walsh had taken over the reins at a struggling Aer Lingus, the roles were reversed. ‘I realised one of the best ways to get our message over about how we were becoming more competitive was to have a row with Michael O’Leary on the radio or television. We’d get pages of coverage.’
He misses those days when he would take bets with his colleagues about how many mentions of ‘AerLingus.com’ he could get into an interview. Within three years he changed Aer Lingus into a profitable low-cost airline. Now that he is running a full-service global airline he misses the head-to-head rivalry. ‘I have had a bit of sparring with Richard Branson,’ he says mournfully, ‘but he’s not a patch on O’Leary.’
Born in Dublin in October 1961, Walsh joined Aer Lingus in 1979, going straight from school to be a cadet pilot. The training from first lesson to commercial standard took only 14 months. ‘I went from never having flown anything before to flying 737s. It was great.’ He laughs with pleasure at the memory.
Not that aviation ran in his family. His father was a glazier while his mother helped in a friend’s boutique, but Walsh always had a passion for things mechanical. ‘My Dad will tell stories of me taking televisions apart at a very early age; and he used to let me play with his car.’ Nowadays those fascinations have evolved into a love of airline technology. ‘We have a great website where you can check in online — I can’t remember the last time I went to a check-in desk.’
He went to Ardscoil Ris, a Christian Brothers school. The second son of five children, his childhood was ‘a very normal Catholic upbringing’. His mother encouraged her offspring to go to Mass with her but his father was more interested in football. ‘My brothers were swimmers but my father and I would go to football matches to support his childhood team, the Bohemians.’
His father also instilled a work ethic in Willie and his siblings. ‘He expected us to work for our pocket money; instilled in all of us the value of money, the value of work.’
Growing up with two brothers spurred his competitive streak. ‘Beating my older brother at sport was an important thing to do but it was all friendly rivalry. I believe competition is healthy.’
At Aer Lingus he rose inexorably to become chief executive in 2001. He and two fellow directors turned the company round but then fell out with the Irish government over whether to privatise or sell it to the management. ‘Governments make bad shareholders because they are not driven by commercial matters… and it all got very messy, so we left.’
The moment British Airways chairman Martin Broughton saw the news of Walsh’s resignation in November 2004, he rang his chief executive Rod Eddington, who was looking for a successor, and told him: ‘I think we’ve found our man.’
When Eddington made contact, Walsh was on his way to a family skiing holiday in Vermont and was not very interested in talking jobs. But in January 2005, he and Broughton had a serious conversation and his appointment was announced on the BA ‘investor day’ in March. ‘I thought he had the right combination of youth and energy along with 27 years’ experience in the business,’ says Broughton. ‘It was my first big decision as chairman and, so far, my best.’
Walsh did not tell his wife, Caragh, whom he met at Aer Lingus, until it was all signed and sealed. He tries to keep work and home life separate, something he admits his wife finds difficult. He had not even told his father about the new job until the day of the announcement. ‘When Martin rang me early that morning to say they were going to announce it I asked them to hold off until lunchtime so that I could tell Dad before he heard it on the radio.’ When the news broke, one of the first messages he received was a text from Michael O’Leary saying ‘Well done’.
Apart from long weekends, the odd day at the races and occasional visits to Dublin to watch rugby, the Vermont skiing trip in 2004 was the last proper holiday he had with his wife and teenage daughter. With business conditions the way they are, he may not have time for another break for a while — but that seems to suit him fine. He’s a human dynamo, a driven man who describes sitting in the sun as ‘torture’. ‘Taking a weekend off is enough break for me. I’m much more comfortable working.’
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