ON TOUR: The Rod Eddington Era ” A Post Mortem
When Rod Eddington arrived at British Airways in March 2000 he came with a reputation as an amiable, knowledgeable airline person, well liked by most who knew him, like Bill Clinton a former Rhodes Scholar, and with a lifetime”s experience at Cathay Pacific behind him. Let there be no doubt Rod Eddington is very bright. He was recruited by the then BA chairman Lord Marshall following a short and unhappy tenure at Ansett, the airline collapsing soon after his departure.
He took over at a low point for British Airways, an airline that ought to be one of the best on the globe, dominating with 40% of the slots, the world”s most lucrative international airport, London Heathrow.
His predecessor Robert Ayling, a government solicitor turned airline man, had left behind a carrier low on moral and saddled with huge debts, some would say due to a misguided aircraft and airline acquisition programme. After years of ignoring its ten-strong ex-British Caledonian Airbus A320 fleet BA had decided to dispose of its mid-life Boeing 757s for the smaller Airbus. The argument against is that with Heathrow crying out for more capacity BA was reducing the number of passengers per individual slot (or flight). One way to increase the LHR passenger capacity seamlessly is to push the average number of passengers per service up from present 150 to more like 165, a 10% increase. Not one single extra aircraft is required. BA did the opposite. Both the British Regional and City Flyer Express purchases were allowed to go through, each proving to be less than successful. Go had come and went. Whilst real money was obtained for its departure nobody will really know the true cost of the exercise. On the commercial front Gatwick was scaled back under Eddington and much more surprisingly the check-in counter at Paddington closed down. The cost of that was minimal but was completely against the worldwide trend for downtown check-in facilities and somehow epitomised BA”s less than high profile attitude and BAA”s policy to persuade passengers to use public transport. South America was virtually abandoned and with all its other problems any interest in KLM evaporated, the airline going to Air France. He was able to reduce personnel numbers by the clever use of redundancy and the outsourcing of routes and resources. However observers have noted BA has never looked thin on the ground, staffwise.
Perhaps the greatest criticism of Eddington”s short stay (too short many would say ” it takes ten years to build a major airline ” that”s how long O”Leary has been in charge) is that he is just too nice, no real cutting edge. BA has not had an input of any significant senior management during his reign (which says that the management was right under Ayling) and the problems at Heathrow during the summers of 2003 and 2004 and now 2005 indicates that something is seriously wrong somewhere. Many feel that he was unwise to ”shut shop” at Heathrow during the various crisis over the last three years.
So what is the conclusion of Eddington”s tenure? Everyone has their own opinion. ABTN believes he has steadied a rocky ship. It”s no longer the world”s favourite airline nor does it want to tell the world of the many advances it has made (did you know that its Boeing 767 long haul fleet now has Club World flat bed seats or that London City is the latest airport to gain on line check-in. There are many other examples). Although we repeat ourselves we must emphasize that at the end of the day British Airways still has its 40% of Heathrow and for the future with T5 the virtual sole use of what will become the world”s best (and most efficient) hub airport. Willie Walsh has all the virtues of Rod Eddington plus a very tough streak. That might make all the difference.