The elder statesman of open skies

In his measured, softly spoken way, Sir Michael Bishop is furious with the Conservative party for its plans to ration air travel. ‘There are few things less edifying than watching politicians jumping on a passing bandwagon,’ says the proprietor chairman of BMI British Midland, which holds the second largest number of take-off and landing slots at London Heathrow. Bishop is a Conservative and he sees proposals by David Cameron and George Osborne to curb air travel through punitive taxation as betrayal. ‘I felt it was a crass and clumsy response and against all Conservative principles,’ he says.

Bishop is the quietly flamboyant elder statesman of the British airline industry; gracious, but with the self-contained air so often found in only children. He readily admits that the interests of Derby-based BMI colour his views on the Tories’ ‘Greener Skies’ proposals. Yet he does not dismiss global warming. ‘We have to recognise that the weather is changing and that there is public concern,’ he says, pointing out that aviation produces less than 3 per cent of carbon emissions in the UK. He does, however, feel that the fear is exaggerated. ‘Everyone has got completely spooked. We should remember the worries over the Millennium Bug which turned out to be a complete ramp.’

From his £2.5 million buy-out of tiny British Midland in 1978 — one of the first private buy-outs ever done in the UK — Bishop has built a business whose profits last year cruised comfortably past the £10 million achieved in 2005. The Sunday Times Rich List ranks him at 388 with a fortune of £185 million.

Along with the rest of the airline industry, BMI lost money in the three years following the September 11 terrorist attacks and Sars scare. Right now, though, Bishop is on a roll. The new Open Skies agreement allows any European airline to fly to any airport in the US, opening up the profitable long-haul market to BMI as never before.