**Why do we care so much about British Airways’ current problems As strike action looms on British Airways, many are outraged at the prospect of disruption, but for others the issue is about an airline that became an extension of British national identity, says John Strickland.**Had you gazed out across the apron of an international airport 30 years ago, the sight of the arrayed tailfins would have looked not unlike a United Nations flag display.
An airline’s colours were often simply those of its home country’s flag.
Green, white and red for the Italian carrier Alitalia, a square white cross on a red background that denoted Swissair, the maple leaf of Air Canada and, of course, the red, white and blue designed to induce a pang of patriotism in any far-flung British traveller - the colours of British Airways.
It’s no coincidence that the biggest airlines are known as flag carriers.
But the current troubles faced by British Airways, which is set to be hit by seven days of strikes by cabin crews, serve as a reminder that while the term flag carrier is still often bandied around its status is in the balance.
Do flag carriers still have a place in the air travelling public’s imagination
Flag carriers were a product of the immediate post-war world when governments around the globe saw the emergence of air travel as a means to “wave the flag” for their respective countries.
Airlines, which were typically owned by their governments, were not so much businesses as prized trophies - each a self-conscious statement that their country had a place on the global stage.
In this heyday of “romantic” air travel, the UK, which had form as a country punching above its small island weight, actually had two flag carriers: BEA (British European Airways) in Europe and BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) on long haul flights. Both were state owned.
Similar companies performed the role in other parts of the world, with examples including Air France and Lufthansa in Europe and Pan Am and TWA in the USA (the latter two actually being privately owned).
Fly the Flag
Britain’s airborne ambitions were further enhanced when, in 1974, its two big airlines joined forces to form one giant flag carrier, British Airways, a name that had originally been registered in 1936.
The livery began to feature a stylised union jack and for those inured to subtlety, its advertising campaigns urged us to “Fly the Flag”.
But as government ownership gave way to privatisation, in 1987, so British Airways’ emphasis evolved from flag carrier to profit turner.
As the management era of Lord King and Sir Colin Marshall began, the objectives of greater efficiency, customer service and the promotion of brand values came to the fore.
That’s not to say that national identity and “Britishness” didn’t continue to play a part. But as other European governments began to look enviously at BA’s growing profitability, the airline industry started to shift. Deregulation, liberalisation, greater competition and consumer choice were becoming the watchwords.
In a profit-driven world, the sentiment induced by flag carriers is no rival for the hard bitten, price-slashing tactics of low-cost airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair.
Yet letting go of a piece of national heritage is hard and still, today, many airlines are treated as flag carrier first, business concern second.
The “budgets” have turned the idea of flag carriers’ status and national identity on its head.
Status trappings
While Ryanair and easyJet both started operations in the UK market, today they are pan-European businesses which have successfully applied their formula across cultural and national boundaries without resistance to their lack of patriotic identity.
The low-cost airline for which I worked, buzz (British based, Dutch owned, sold to Ryanair), flew French customers between French cities such as Bordeaux and Grenoble whilst customers happily purchased and ate our British-baked croissants.
While many still see British Airways as the UK’s flag carrier in the skies, it has shed many of the trappings of that status. Indeed, its ill-fated multicultural tailfins were a deliberate attempt to break away from the ball-and-chain of British identity in a globalised world.
Margaret Thatcher’s famous dismissal of the new livery, with a strategically-placed handkerchief, coupled with customer backlash, suggests even the most free market-orientated of thinkers cannot shed the sentimental attachment to national identity.
It’s perhaps ironic that the airline business as a truly global industry attracts such powerful feelings of patriotism and political pride.
Warm feeling
However as airlines battle their worst financial crisis ever and as many have fallen by the wayside or been bought by competitors, consolidation is the ongoing trend with a widespread recognition in the industry that financially it simply is not sustainable for every country to maintain its own flag carrier.
The case of Alitalia is a case in point. The company, wracked by losses and industrial strife on an altogether grander scale than those affecting BA, would ordinarily have died a natural death. However it has been saved by political will, albeit in a reduced form, but the point is well made when we reflect that the biggest airline in Italy is now… Ryanair.
There is no doubt that there is an intangible warm feeling for many customers in boarding an aircraft representing elements of their own national culture and possibly with the national flag on the tail.
British Airways has managed to successfully capitalise on these feelings and to do so profitably until the global financial problems of the last two years. However there is no place for sentiment, the ultra lean and non nationalistically aligned low cost carriers have brought a new reality to the marketplace. They have shown that a multiplicity of customers is happy to use them.
There isn’t room for all the flag carriers that still exist and those that survive will have to find the right blend of empathetic imagery combined with a hardnosed focus on efficiency and profitability.