“Schadenfreude” is a magnificent word for a not very nice sentiment. But sometimes you can’t help feeling that the axe of fate couldn’t have hit a more appropriate target. I refer, of course, to the current severe financial problems at British Airways.
They tell us that their problems are caused by the collapse of “business travel” following recent economic shenanigans; they are more affected by this than other airlines, it seems, because their “business model” has always concentrated predominantly on “front end” travellers, i.e. those in fat-cat and corporate-zombie classes. Too right it has, as anyone who has travelled in their deep-vein-thrombosis class has always known. BA has always been notorious for its utter unconcern for these people, who are generally the only passengers who have paid for their own tickets.
We know who you are and where you live. We remember how you tried to de-British yourselves – no doubt to appease rich American Anglophobes – with the the redesign of the tailfin to replace the red white and blue with some multicoloured primitivism (O for a three-year old with a box of crayons – I’d make a fortune). Don’t come crying to us when it all goes pear-shaped.
But most of all we’ll remember the total contempt for the rank and file. My personal last straw occurred when my 15-year-old son was left stranded at Heathrow after his flight was cancelled, with no information whatsoever available on what would happen next, within an hour of the midnight airport closure. You and I would know that, if we were left flat, we could check into a hotel with a credit card and sort it out in the morning. You can’t do that when you’re 15. In the end we told him to find someone in a uniform and cling to them like a limpet, and eventually they sorted him out. They still lost his luggage, though.
There are better airlines around. Some of them remember that they’re ultimately reliant on the ordinary paying customer.
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