The World

I am in the departure lounge at Heathrow, waiting for my flight to Mexico City. This will be my first visit to Mexico since I went on an unusually arduous honeymoon in 1991, which involved rather more long-distance coach journeys than was probably wise. This time, no coaches.

It is interesting to be flying British Airways on the day that the company announced record losses for the first nine months of the year. I scanned the faces of the check-in staff for signs of demoralisation, or the “couldn’t care less” attitude that might be a sign that the threatened strike is indeed in the offing. But they were admirably poker-faced and professional. And indeed some – including the FT – are arguing that the latest quarterly results are good news since they show that sharp cost-cutting has returned the airline to profit over the last three months, although not over the year as a whole.

Still, British Airways are in a really tight spot – they have a frightening pension deficit, fewer premium passengers because of the recession and staff who are mutinous as they see their benefits cut back steadily. On my last BA flight, I asked one of the stewardesses what the staff thought of chief executive, Willie Walsh. She replied – “Put it this way, nobody’s ever seen him eat anything on a flight.” There is very little sympathy for BA staff in Britain – since they are widely portrayed as mollycoddled and economically illiterate. (Striking, when the airline faces huge losses that threaten their jobs.) I have a little more sympathy. It must be tough starting what you think is an interesting and reasonably comfortable and secure career – and gradually seeing your benefits and conditions being squeezed.

Still, it strikes me that there are uncomfortable analogies between the situation of British Airways and Britain. Both went through a period of confidence and prosperity for about twenty years from the mid-1980s. Britain was booming and the newly-privatised British Airways was a symbol of the resurgent confidence of British industry. It even styled itself “the world’s favourite airline” without provoking catcalls of derision.

But now both BA and Britain find themselves living beyond their means. David Cameron, the Tory leader, uses the slogan – “We can’t go on like this”. Willie Walsh of BA would say exactly the same thing to his disgruntled staff. I wonder whether, when Cameron starts cutting Britain’s deficit, he will end up just as unpopular as the embattled boss of British Airways.