Dick Gilbert, chairman, BACA

Bad old days back with a vengeance

It is disappointing to see 2010 start off with airline closures and strikes. The British Airways cabin staff industrial action is so reminiscent of how things were 40 years ago when Heathrow had a reputation as a hotbed of discontent.

In 1970 I was working for Northeast Airlines (the British one) and nearly started a strike myself. Driving out to the busy domestic "Alpha" stands at Terminal One to change some documents in the aircraft library of a Trident one morning, I was surprised to find the stand empty. You couldn't miss our aircraft - they were canary yellow! With departure time fast approaching, something had clearly gone wrong, but it didn't take long to spot the aircraft out at the remote "Charlie" parking area.

When I got to it, there was a tug attached with its engine running and two guys leaning against it. I asked if they were about to move the aircraft to the terminal as, if so, I would follow them over and do my paperwork when the Trident was on its stand and boarding passengers to save time. They told me that they couldn't tow the aircraft because the portable maintenance steps (a hydraulic set mounted on the back of a Commer van) were still in position. When I asked why they didn't move the steps, they said that they were "disputing" and it wasn't their job - an engineer should do it.

It was at that point that my ignorance shone through as I volunteered to move the steps myself thereby enabling some chance of an on-time departure. The tug drivers raised their eyebrows, but accepted the proposal. I jumped into the Commer, backed it away from the aircraft, then followed the Trident back to Terminal One, completed my paperwork and returned to the office very pleased with myself for resolving a crisis.

Within an hour it became apparent that, far from resolving a crisis, I had started one. The tug drivers had lodged a complaint about some spotty young clerk interfering with a dispute; the engineers objected to untrained idiots trying to do their job; and a union meeting was to be held at Epsom Square near the threshold of 28 Right (as it was then). Fortunately my senior managers defused the situation and I was given a lecture about the way to handle things at LHR.

It wasn't just us. A new (Canadian) handling agent opened up on the north side, and regularly had windows broken and vehicles overturned during the night, clearly the work of protectionist militants who felt that the new firm could steal their jobs - many foreign carriers were handled by BEA or Aer Lingus I think, and an independent handling agent was an appalling thought for some of those guys.

Disputes could get so obscure that nobody could be expected to avoid falling into traps. For example, the handling agent (General Aircraft Services) did have a couple of smaller airlines as customers, both of whom (by coincidence) used Fina for refueling. The result was that, at one point, BEA handlers refused to service any aircraft that was refueled by Fina, because Fina refueled aircraft handled by GAS. It was all an impenetrable maze.

The common factor was that the UK national carriers BEA always seemed to be involved, both sides claimed that their door was always open for discussion but that the other party wouldn't talk, and both accused the other side of intransigence. To see these attitudes and deadlocks all over again in 2010 makes my heart sink whatever the rights and wrongs of the BA cabin crew dispute might be. Hopefully, by the time you read this, the issues will have been resolved, and we'll see no more of this in our industry. We have quite enough to cope with already.

With that thought in mind, it is always sad when an operator retrenches, even when it doesn't directly affect you, because every cut back is a sign of the state of the industry. Air Partner Private Jets will be missed, but the organisation says it will be the stronger for restructuring. APPJ has certainly played a major role in the marketplace in recent years and I wish the staff good luck in their search for employment.

Meanwhile, Air Partner's broking division provides a valuable service for the industry - up there with the best, having inherited a noble pedigree going back to Tony Mack's Air London, and that of his father before him - a Berlin Airlift veteran who founded a flying school at Gatwick in 1961.

But retrenchment in private aviation, and the crash of the BA dispute, reminded me of some dismal aspects of a past age that none of us should have to return to. We can only hope that spring, and a new post-recession era, will bring brighter times for us all. Dick Gilbert, chairman, BACA