Plane (plain) stupid?

Poor Willie Walsh, the CEO of British Airways. He was so sure that Heathrow's Terminal 5 would be a success that he went on camera. In this interview, only a few months before Terminal 5 was opened, he talks about the benefits the new terminal will bring. If only he had waited. Watch and  learn!

He says:

• "Terminal 5... will give us a much more efficient operation."
  (The reality: it's inefficient and BA looks incompetent. The opening of Terminal 5 was a fiasco.)
• "We will be able to give our customers the standard of service that we have aspired to give at Heathrow for many years."
  (The reality: BA will be aspiring for many more years to give such a standard!)
• "The first thing customers will notice when they walk into Terminal 5 is how spacious it is, how bright, how airy, how calm, the whole experience is."
  (The reality: it is spacious, which was lucky as so many people had to spend so much time there! People have complained about how confusing the whole terminal is. It was almost too calm too – as many of the check-in desks were closed.)
  
• "It will be a brand new modern facility that has been designed to cope with the pressures of today's travel."
  (The reality: it cannot cope!)
• "This is going to make travel through the airport a pleasant experience."
  (The reality: it's extremely unpleasant!)
• "I think our customers are really going to really love it."
  (The reality: only BA's rivals love it, because BA's customers will fly with them in future.)

He couldn't have been more wrong!

More recent interviews with Willie Walsh show him apologizing to BA passengers. In our exercise, we look at the language he uses to apologize.

Deborah Capras