No time to relax for BA’s fighter pilot

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.