| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 07/08/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 62 |
| Copyright: Other |
Ayling says failing isn’t a word you should use
FORMER British Airways chief executive Bob Ayling did little to endear himself to the travel industry when he broke his silence on his axing from the airline.Typically, Ayling refused to accept the blame for BA losing £244m last year.
Speaking on Radio Four’s On the Ropes, he said: “It would only be true to say it had failed if you could establish the value of the company would have been greater had we done other things. Nobody has ever suggested that… failed is the wrong word.”
Of course, this is a convenient argument, because no-one can prove what the outcome would have been if history was changed.
Ayling rambled on, David Icke-style saying: “I don’t think fault is a useful idea. Fault is a concept about error, blame. It comes out of religious ideas, it comes out of penal ideas and it comes out of legal ideas.
“Clearly people do things wrong sometimes, not to say we did not make mistakes along the way but to say an individual, in relation to a very large business, is at fault is something that is only very occasionally a useful idea.”
Ayling had some bad luck at BA. He had to embark on a huge cost-cutting exercise and the Asian economic collapse put a massive burden on the airline.
But Ayling alienated much of middle England with his ethnic tailfins; became unpopular with his own staff; and was loathed by travel agents who felt he was threatening their livelihood with plans to axe commission.
A bit of humble pie from a man who received a severance pay of nearly £2m and a £240,000 pension for life would not have gone amiss. And if he couldn’t manage that, he would have been better off just keeping quiet.
It’s not my fault: Ayling doesn’t think the concept of fault is a useful idea