An Open Letter to British Airways CEO Willie Walsh

Dear Willie Walsh,

There’s not one thing that I want to bring to your attention. There’s not been one massive single incident that I can point and say that’s the tipping point (although I’m about to point out two or three areas). But let’s be honest here… British Airways really is sliding down the pan.

I’m sure that you’ll be able to point out some of the new innovations when this is put to you (such as the London City to JFK route on BA001 which I think is a lovely yet out of reach for me idea, or the re-opening of the Heathrow to Las Vegas route), but my experiences with BA over the last few years is like descending a new level with Dante every flight.

Let me tell you about my recent journey to Las Vegas. I flew BA from Edinburgh to Heathrow T5 before switching to your OneWorld partner American Airlines for the transatlantic and Domestic US portion. It was a similar story coming back. I’m not a businessman, I travel steerage, but I know how it all works, and I can retain OneWorld Sapphire each year – admittedly through American’s AAdvantage rather than BA’s Executive Club. You might wonder why I get more benefit from a US company’s Frequent Flyer program than yours, or why I deliberately choose to fly American on the transatlantic portion rather than your airline?

Simply because I don’t want to expose myself to BA any longer than I have to.

The A319 aircraft now flying the domestic route I use are cramped beyond belief. The seat pitch is smaller than almost any other regular carrier, and I’m pretty sure the headrest to headrest size is smaller still . Unlike any other carrier I feel like I’m squeezing into these seats and wearing the aircraft like a duffel coat that’s one size too small.

That’s of course if I’ve managed to avoid the “B” seats at the front of the plane – converting two business class seats into three economy seats and forcing 7% of the passengers per flight to essentially fly on a bicycle seat with some padding is going to make customers return.

Your new seating policy, the latest in the nickel and dime approach to trying to save money, is terrible. Putting out the average to poor seats on each aircraft for pre-reservation is a terrible way to squeeze cash out of customers. The fact that you seem to be holding back the “prime” seats for your very frequent flyers is just shallow and underhand.

While it’s nice to still have a cooked breakfast on the morning flight, the rest of the in-flight catering has lost whatever charm it had. A small bag of sesame seeds and the smallest can of juice possible? Really? And this is meant to retain and gain customers over the low cost carriers?

Your accountants can probably tell you how much these ancillary fees have brought in. Can they tell you how many customers, and how much they would spend, have been lost from your bottom line?

A few days before Terminal 5 opened at Heathrow I transferred from an American flight (from Los Angeles) arriving at Terminal 3, and connected to your Edinburgh flight in Terminal 1. Do you know how long it took me? Aircraft door to boarding gate, on foot, via security, no bus transfers, no queues, no silly multiple checks for passport, tickets, facial pictures and another ticket check?

19 minutes.

How long did last week’s T3 to T5 transfer take? Well with a queue for the bus transfer, a queue for a ticket check… then passport control… then a picture of my face… two more ticket checks and security?

Two and a half hours. Almost an order of magnitude longer!

Quick, pull out the average transfer time statistics, find a passenger satisfaction survey to show I’m wrong. The worst possible problem for BA is this… I’m expecting you to have numbers to be able to show that all is working well. I’m expecting it but I know from my own experiences that all is not well, that the service level is dropping, that the staff left are doing their best but are at their limits and yet management seems oblivious in a drive to become Ryanair.

At least I know what to expect from Ryanair, and they don’t hide how they operate.

Let me level with you Mr Walsh, I want to like British Airways again – but the communication from BA to the customer base is poor to non-existent. It’s a tough time for the airline industry but you need to keep the customer happy. You need them to want you to get through this. You want them on your side with all the changes you are pushing through. All of the above could be mitigated by good communication and explanation.

The modern world has a huge number of tools that will help you. Heck For the price of one of those seats on BA001 I could gather up four or five people and give you a crash course. Maybe then many of us will be happy to fly BA, rather than endure our time while in your staffs capable hands..