Convention comment: Walsh tackles questions head on

After listening to the prime minister of Malta talking about change and the importance of the internet, we settled down for the ABTA Convention keynote speech with British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh.

Despite a few quips, including a joke about Michael O’Leary inventing the internet, it all seemed a lot of fuss about nothing.  Willie reiterated his stance against air passenger duty and for us all to fight it, talked about the need for airline consolidation and the importance of the joint venture with Iberia, and suddenly it was all over.

A bit of a damp squib we thought, but it soon brightened up when moderator Bill Turnbull went to a question and answer session.

Did anyone have any questions?  No, said Bill, so like all good moderators, he had his own.

If we should all pull together, shouldn’t Willie agree with ABTA and drop his opposition to a per plane tax to replace APD?

Willie stood firm, saying we had been conned into believing it was an environmental tax when it was nothing of the sort.

To the floor, but unfortunately a voice from the audience had no microphone.  “Tell me and I’ll repeat it,” yelled Bill.  Unfortunately it was a very long question in the silence.  Eventually we found out it was something about seat costs.

Up pipes Simon Calder from The Independent – you can’t keep a good man down.  He had a two part question, the first was whether the strike was entirely the unions fault – ‘Entirely’ boomed back Willie, without waiting for the second part of the question.

Incidentally, the second part was about further strikes and Willie was confident they would survive them and was absolutely determined to drive through change.

Bill wanted a show of hands or at least a yay or nay about whether business had been affected by the strikes.  He didn’t get it from a largely muted audience, but drew his own conclusions anyway.

Over to Andy Cooper, from Thomas Cook, another man with one of those two-part questions.  Could they grow at Madrid, as all parties are opposed to expansion at Heathrow? (I don’t know if there was a second part).

“It’s possible,” said Willie.  He went on to say that restricting traffic at Heathrow would not restrict airline growth.  “It’s nonsense – it will just grow away from the south east because aviation is absolutely critical to the future.”

Entertaining stuff but all too soon it was over.   But next time Willie, just forget the speech and go straight to the questions.

Jeremy Skidmore

Follow Jeremy Skidmore’s opinions at www.jeremyskidmore.com