Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [42]
British Airways boss Lord King disingenuously suggested he had been too caught up in the buy-up of Qantas to pay full attention to what had been happening at home. But the dirty tricks began as far back as 1988. That was when Virgin’s flamboyant chairman was reading through some of his first-class passengers’ comments and noticed one said she had been called at home by a British Airways official and asked why she had chosen to fly Virgin. She was not the only one. British Airways officials had accessed the Virgin passenger lists. They were also harassing passengers at the check-in and offering free British Airways air miles to swap flights. The British Airways officials were even calling passengers and lying that Virgin flights had been delayed in order to get them to transfer to British Airways. Meanwhile, British newspapers were running stories about Branson’s finances as part of a smear campaign by slick PR man Brian Basham. All this to compete against a start-up that was 30 times smaller than ‘the world’s favourite airline’, as British Airways liked to call themselves.
When a television documentary caught British Airways staff haranguing Virgin passengers, the company denied it in its newspaper, publicly branding Branson a liar and providing him with the legal grounds to fight. It was war. Branson, with advice from ruined rebel airline boss Freddie Laker, went to the courts backed with funding from the $US1 billion sale of his Virgin Music group. Meanwhile, British Airways suspected there was a Virgin mole in its ranks and launched the £50,000 Operation Covent Garden to find the leak. There was no mole.
Also underway was Operation Barbara, a disinformation and muck-spreading campaign against Virgin that was authorised from the very top. By the time British Airways had reached the stage of shredding documents and attempting to stall the Virgin court case, it was no longer considered ‘the world’s favourite airline’ by many British customers. The dirty tricks campaign had driven disgusted passengers straight into the arms of the rival it was trying to stop. Lord King admitted he had ‘underestimated’ Branson. Qantas may have wished it had been saddled with a different partner.
Despite these nefarious doings, British Airways was credited in the Australian media for having the ‘ear’ of the Australian government and for bringing in former Brambles chairman and Qantas director Gary Pemberton to replace Bill Dix as chairman.9 In August John Ward stepped down as chief executive, with Pemberton holding the reins until October, when James Strong, the former chief executive officer of Australian Airlines, was handed the top job of managing director.
The choice was a deliberate attempt to build solidarity between the merging staff of Qantas and Australian Airlines. Things had not been running smoothly. ‘There was an initial feeling in the Australian Airlines camp that this isn’t a merger, it’s rape,’ Julia Fellows, the Qantas human resources director charged with making the marriage work, told the Australian Financial Review.10 The airlines had vastly different cultures. Little things like the Qantas staff being paid fortnightly and the Australian staff being paid weekly became major bones of contention. Things came to a head when, at a Christmas party in the city, Qantas staff refused to let Australian staff onto the guest list.
To show its solidarity with Australian Airlines staff, Qantas bosses chose the same stewardess, Cindy Mackenzie, who had appeared in the Australian TV ads, to be the new face of the combined airlines in the new Qantas ads. It was now called Qantas, The Australian Airline. That did not help the former Australian Airline steward ordered to shave off his beard to conform to Qantas regulations. The steward, one of four bearded employees, went to the union and was advised it