Airlines: January 2007 Archives

Throughout 2001 there were deepening signs of financial crisis at what was then Swissair and its parent SAirGroup. It looked as if they would be restructured with heavyweight funding from the usual suspects in the international banking community; the idea that the situation was already beyond saving seemed inconceivable.

Then on 2 October something happened that I remember almost as vividly as the first whispers of what would become known as "911". I was writing for our realtime news service Air Transport Intelligence and trying to leave my desk for a quick lunch. Suddenly our reporter Maria Wagland was saying that two Swissair aircraft had been impounded at Heathrow. We were still trying to check that out when our Turkish correspondent Tolga Ozbek filed a story saying a Turkish fuel company was refusing to refuel Swissair aircraft. The game was well and truly up, and the ghastly, prolonged death of Swissair was inevitable.

Its $13 billion collapse brought down Sabena of Belgium and other affiliates in France as well, and put 5,000+ staff out of work.

Make no mistake, Willie Walsh is the big winner in the settlement of the British Airways cabin-crew strike, despite some very odd things being written in British quality newspapers.

Not only is the cost of the settlement to BA a minor one, but the BASSA arm of the T&G union representing the cabin crew has been publicly humiliated and is in internal disarray, and Willie himself did not put a foot wrong in the whole affair.

The game was up from the moment on BBC primetime radio news that T&G deputy general secretay Jack Dromey failed to respond to Walsh's declaration that average sickness absence among cabin crew was 22 days a year. Not news to anyone in the industry, but big news to the rest of the world.

Dromey repeatedly refused to address the point. Shortly after, his boss Tony Woodley took over the negotiations and he and Walsh quietly thrashed out the new deal over a period of days. I guess labour deals aren't negotiated in the proverbial 'smoke-filled rooms' anymore, but it was that sort of old-fashioned session that cracked it.

Upshot:: no protracted strike, sickness absence problem consigned to history, minor concessions on both sides, stock price rock-steady.

Nobody should be surprised. The characterisation of 'slasher' Walsh as the scourge of unions is simply stupid. It comes from his Aer Lingus days and ignores the context of what was happening at that company - which was nothing less than its complete reinvention from a stone-age, state-owned, flag-carrier into a reasonably modern business with a fighting chance of long-term survival. Employment reduction was just one piece of the jigsaw.

And I have to respect former pilot Walsh, he passed the Aer Lingus aircrew selection test in the same era that I failed it! Another story...

Well, the Airbus numbers are out and my prediction of a week ago that they'd get to 40% by net units sold was right, but a big chunk of undisclosed customers listed as December 06 orders means that I wasn't as close as I'd like to have been. In fact, Airbus's 790 net orders gets them up to 43% against Boeing's 1,044 net at 57%.

So that's one of their best years ever in absolute terms, but also puts Boeing back as undisputed champion for the year - for Airbus I think "bittersweet" is the word (probably something a little stronger inside the company.)

The additional December 06 orders revealed today are as follows:

• Undisclosed - 5 x A320


• Private - 1 x A319


• MEA - 4 x A319, 4 x A330-200


• AirBlue - 4 x A320


• Private - 1 x A319


• Undisclosed - 3 x A319, 7 x A320, 5 x A330-200


• Undisclosed - 9 x A319, 18 x A320

If you know who the undisclosed customers are, then do tell...

So congratulation to Boeing on a really superb performance. And congratulations to FT Deutschland who got the correct Airbus figure leaked to them four days ago!