deboyzoned

With all this chaos and heartache caused. Alex Cruz could at least have offered something in his very delayed (3 days) news conference.

Complementary BoB for all until backlog is cleared .... He could treat it as his Leaving Party .... I'm sure many would raise a toast to that.

Padmeister

If Alex Cruz turns this around it will be a miracle! He will have to do some serious arse kissing to his customers and staff first for one thing. I have always been a big fan of BA but what has happened the last couple of days will have seriously damaged the brand.

rossmacd

Very poor interview. Comes across arrogant.

He says "BA will settle all compensation obligations" - cannot wait to see if they actually do, or how many will be forced to MCOL....

IAMORGAN

The thing that amazes me is the way he has allowed this to mushroom. To me, he comes across as out of his depth. Hiding on twitter with his hi viz jacket with his lanyard what I heard was "we're weeely sowwwy we're twyying weely hard to sort it out." To staff on the Yammer post, I heard "please come in and get stuck in. For my part, I've done a GREAT job and am working REALLY hard - I've even recorded a video for Twitter and responded to a few emails once I could log in". As in, im a middle manager shuffling my papers. But what is lacking is that sense of leadership! It's almost as though he thinks he has teams in place to do all the customer communication etc and yes of course he can't possibly do everything but what I've have expected would be:

(1) for him, very publicly, to be seen at Heathrow at least once a day, interacting with staff and customers. Only needs to take an hour but he's the boss and the responsibility ultimately lies with him.

(2) Instead of just "really sorry, not there yet" I'd have expected "i promise that if you're out of pocket as a result of this we will make it right - do x if you need a hotel, don't sleep on the floor." Now I don't know what contingencies are in place but if you're a family of 6 maxed out on your credit card you need some help. He needed to 'talk to' those groups via media.

(3) Make sure he was on to the media, so there was some counter-narrative to the "BA ruined my honeymoon" and the dad with the little girl who called on him to resign on national tv news with the anchor pointing out (and BBC printing again today) that nobody from BA would do an interview.

As a CEO you need to lead by example and set the 'tone' or 'mood' of the response. I don't expect him to go and start looking at computer code or helping out with baggage reconciliation, but he needs to send reassuring tones to customers and frontline staff that he is on the case and it's being sorted - and, crucially, maybe saying to management / supervisors internally "if you need to make a decision that is out of policy this weekend for a genuine business need you will have my and the management team's support" - empower the staff to work with their mates on the LH ticket desk, at HEX etc to all use their own grassroots connections and pull through - and then hold true in sorting out the bill / post mortem afterwards. You hired the staff, so trust them and let them do what they do best - look after their customers.

Worcester

The biggest question will be what Al Baker makes of this as the largest shareholder. He is as I understand a touch volatile, so could be influenced by the media fairly easily.

apollo00

In many respects this would ironically turn this weekend into a good thing for BA, better he goes in a Ł100m disaster than bleeds the company dry over three years...

corporate-wage-slave

With apologies to wizla, here are some notes from that interview on World At One (WAtO). Some digs from BBC presenter (Shaun Ley) about avoiding media and using YouTube instead, interview was with Richard Westcott, the BBC transport correspondent.

- profusely, profusely apologetic about what has happened
- conscious of hardship many of customers have gone through
- Fully committed to meeting our obligation to passengers affected in terms compensation
- 95% scheduled flights running today, two thirds of all affected passenger will be resolved today. 75,000 passengers affected
- had a power surge in local data centre which lasted a few minutes but knocked out the entire system
- affected the networks and hardware, and stopped all interfaces from working. Impact across the board.
- back up system did not come up as expected
- lasted a few minutes but damage took hours to resolve in terms of rolling back and restoring services.
- commits to a full investigation but not entirely sure what happened, and will learn lessons.
- offshored staff not a factor, it was looked after and fixed by locally employed staff. Denies outsourcing was a factor.
- systems are now back working normally.

apollo00

That sounds a lot like 'we'll pay the things we are legally obliged to pay' and a long way from 'we'll make sure nobody is out of a pocket as a result of this'.

The really disappointing thing is at this point it's clear how this looks, they're not misjudging how it looks, they just don't care.

Oxon Flyer

Only time will tell on that particular point.

1HourPhoto

Does anyone think it's time for WW to go, I'm no fan of AC and think the sooner he leaves BA the better, but WW is the one pulling the strings.

Worcester

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40082634

I banking a doughnut (big zero with nothing in it) was normally a polite suggestion that you should really be getting your CV out there...

Padmeister

I am no expert on how the board of directors work so what would they have to do? Do they all have to vote Willy out?

Ldnn1

There is now a separate article on BBC asking if Cruz can remain in control:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40082634

Worcester

Yes, like politicians they need a decent chance to implement their ideas, but after a while they loose momentum and need to make way for fresh thinking.

Calum

It's a shame ladbrokes won't take bets on when he's going.