Radio
Jumbo mumbo
Michael Vestey
Not many people fail and come away with £.2 million and the need never to work again. Bob Ayling did, of course, having been sacked as chief executive of British Airways for presiding over a slump in prof- its and a falling share price. He was also dismissed as the non-executive chairman of the company that ran the ludicrous and laughable Millennium Dome, surely the greatest white elephant in the entire history of these metaphorical creatures.
He appeared in the first of a new series of On the Ropes on Radio Four this week (Tuesday) and seemed to have no idea why he'd been fired from both these jobs. He thought he'd done rather well. Even his plan to replace the BA aircraft tail-fins with dreadful, tacky designs was misunder- stood. John Humphrys asked him what he thought when Baroness Thatcher draped her napkin over a model plane with the new pattern, saying, 'We don't want this on British Airways.' I felt sad, actually. I felt sad that an idea which was clearly a good idea was being given so little thought .. . ' He added, 'I had letters from people who wrote and said, "This is the first time I've ever really thought that this airline was speaking to me."' Do people really write letters like that? Who can they be? Tony Blair? Damien Hirst?
Were the problems at BA his fault? 'I don't think fault is a useful idea. Fault is a concept which is almost, sort of, error, blame, and it's something that comes out of religious ideas, it comes out of penal ideas, it comes out of legal ideas.' Well, thinking like that helps, I suppose, and it explains 'We can brush everything under Prescott's carpet!' why he can't see where he went wrong. He sounded very much like the lawyer he once was, particularly when Humphrys suggested that it was wrong for him to be rewarded so handsomely after failing at BA. 'As far as I was concerned, I had a contract and was willing to work on the basis of that con- tract.' But wasn't it a moral issue? 'The moral issue as far as I'm concerned is, both sides had to observe the contract.' He didn't accept that he had failed because BA was a better company than it might have been if the management team hadn't done what it had in the past four years.
Nor was he bitter. Why, only that morn- ing, he chortled, he had been eating straw- berries in his garden and it was difficult to feel bitter while so engaged. His only doubt was his taking on the Dome while running BA. 'It turned out to need a lot more work than I thought it would in the first place.' With the benefit of hindsight, he said, 'it was not a sensible thing to do'. But, he went on, the development at Greenwich had been 'in many respects a fantastic suc- cess'. One could sense that an astounded Humphrys was about to faint. Isn't it a national embarrassment? he countered, ris- ing above the need for the smelling-salts. No, it was a collective campaign by the media. 'For some reason the media of Britain have decided to knock the Dome. That is not what people who go to it feel.' So why was he sacked, then? 'They felt that there had to be someone who accepted public responsibility for the fact that an additional grant of money was needed.'
Whenever I think of Ayling's BA, I think of two things: the stupid tail-fins and a friend who volunteered for early redundan- cy after 25 years as a stewardess. A small farewell party was to be held for her as she hung up her uniform on her last day. Returning from a long-haul flight at about 4 o'clock in the morning she found a very small party indeed, as most people were away or asleep. After a glass of champagne she was presented with a blown-up framed photograph of a BA jumbo jet. What on earth do I do with this? she wondered. Would you have it on your wall? It's now in the loft. It's typical of the soullessness and insensitivity of modern corporate life and in that respect Ayling's BA resembles John Birt's BBC.
Listening to Ayling on this programme made me wonder how such people rise to the top. It can't just be the Peter Principle, where people are promoted beyond their competence. There has to be some other factor. Perhaps a lack of observation helps. You just plough on regardless, not noticing what's happening around you. When Humphrys told him that a lot of people had said he simply wasn't a good manager, he replied, 'Well, I don't think a lot of people do say that, actually. People who write things in newspapers may have said that. That's about 20 people.' Oh dear. We must wish him many more happy strawberry-eat- ing days in his garden.
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