There are some major leadership changes coming to International Airlines Group (IAG), which is the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Vueling. It has just been announced that Willie Walsh will be retiring: Walsh still step down from his role as CEO of IAG as of June 30, 2020 Walsh will step…
Continue reading: Willie Walsh Stepping Down As IAG CEO
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Made huge changes most of which were needed.
I consider BAs short haul product better than other legacy airlines and although I missed free food and drink at first I prefer the option to buy something good than having something poor included
Iberia short haul is OK and Aer Lingus pretty good.
Been a while since I flew long haul on any of them
It will be interesting to see what happens next but I can see a bit more improvement for BA to move it upmarket and more acquisitions if they add value. I can also see the product of the ex legacy carriers becoming more similar
Could also be politically based (company politics) to now bring in the IB CEO to stop making everyone else besides BA feel that IAG = BA with some airlines on the side. Also with Air Europa on the horizon the company will become more balanced between UK/IE and ES based airlines.
Or it is simply because Gallego has done a great job at IB. Those guys are on a roll for the past few years and have turned themselves around.
IAG must provide evidencies that is an EU business in order to be granted authorization to fly as an EU carrier in the post Brexit context. This has to be shown obviously with the stock distribution between UK / rest but I wonder an EU management (Spain in this case) will be cool to strengthen the proeuropean look in the future.
I wonder if Willie Walsh is gone the Norwegian issue might heat up again. With him gone maybe we'll see a renewed push from IAG to acquire the Scandinavian carrier. If Lufthansa invests in Alitalia, IAG might try to counterbalance that with Norwegian.
It never hurt Willie's strategies that BA has a stronger and richer captive market because of LHR than any other airline in the world.
Gallego has to run IAG, including BA, as a company that wants to be best-in-class in order to fully unlock IAG's potential
I'm amazed that nobody in this miles enthusiasts community, who I'm sure like myself love using our hard-earned miles on award tickets--mentioned that it was Billy Walsh who, as the CEO of BA years ago, instituted the most horrendous fees on award tickets from the US to Europe (he called "fuel" surcharges back then). I hope people on this website are aware that BA lost a multi-million dollars lawsuit here in the US (and I was one of the plaintiffs) accusing BA of the extortionist practice imposing those "fuel" surcharges on award tickets to, and from Europe. And yet, the AIG board did nothing to punish Billy Walsh for the loss of so much money for BA. This man deserves only a scorn for pioneering this obnoxious practice with regard to award tickets, which unfortunately spread to so many other airlines, big and small.
With regard to Billy Walsh, I would say: good riddance (even if it's voluntary).
(And I can't believe Ben you were saying that Walsh was "beloved" by BA customers--I seriously doubt this is true, at least among their loyalty program members).
If there is less demand for passenger travel once Covid 19 passes due to increase in technology use for businesses, airlines may well reduce the number of seats on board aircraft as fewer seats will be filled per flight meaning that they may as well give passengers more comfort and attract more of them on board- particularly because fewer passengers means that airlines are more liable to financial difficulty and failure.