Walking around London the last couple of days, I’ve seen the following headline on those Evening Standard boards that are dotted around the city:

“BA to charge for choosing a seat”.

Okay, firstly you need to understand where the Standard slots into the array of newspapers available in the United Kingdom. Politically speaking, it’s typically right-of-centre, and has been fairly unfriendly to the Labour government since not long after we came back into power in 1997. It’s quite similar to the Daily Mail in that it takes a fairly angry, indignant attitude towards the way society is “going”. So one could read from this headline that the Evening Standard’s editors don’t think the idea of British Airways charging people to select a seat is a very good one.

I don’t always agree with what they have to say, and I haven’t bought the Standard for a good few years (although they do have a good Friday magazine, and jobs sections!), but on this case I agree. British Airways has been under financial duress for a long time; in fact it’s almost miraculous that they’re still flying considering the hits they’ve taken: SARS, 9/11, economic downturn, worries about the ecological impact of flying, competition from the train (for European and domestic travel) etc. Major airlines have disappeared over the last few years, and it’s good that the British flag carrier is still in operation, and was the fifth largest carrier in the world in 2008.

BA has been the national pride for a long time, flying to 150 destinations around the globe, connecting millions of people a year from distant cities to their destinations via London Heathrow & Gatwick, and enabling those living in the UK to travel around the globe without connecting in Paris or Frankfurt. But we must put national pride aside while we consider the future of the airline. Whilst I do believe it is one of the greatest airlines ever – and that feeling of boarding a British Airways plane at the end of a tiring trip, in a foreign land is always rewarding – I find it saddening that the company is effectively turning itself into an expensive version of easyJet or Ryanair, with no apparent added value. Earlier in the summer the company announced that short haul passengers would no longer receive in-flight meals at all. Senior management came under a great deal of flack for suggesting that some middle managers and lower staff should forfeit a month’s salary for the good of the company, when the CEO earns three quarters of a million pounds per year. Now the decision to emulate the low-cost airlines in leaving passengers to fight for seats at the last minute adds to the illusion that British Airways is slowly losing the quality touches that make it great.

And that’s on top of long-standing issues such as poor numbers in reuniting people with their luggage (BA is the worst offender in Europe for losing passengers’ bags) and failures in dispute resolution leading to strikes that cause global disruption to tens of thousands. Added embarrassment came last week when it emerged that Downing Street chose Virgin Atlantic, another great British company, to take the Prime Minister and British delegation to the UN General Assembly and G20 meetings in America. British Airways traditionally carried Prime Ministers on foreign trips by air.

So what to do? I don’t claim to be an expert in the aviation business, but maybe it’s time for the UK to stop fighting to retain a global service airline on the scale of Lufthansa or Air France-KLM, both of whom have solid financial bearings and great service reputations. How can pride drive business decisions? Surely it would be more effective if BA scaled back some of its routes, stopped ordering expensive new aircraft, and focus on the profitable routes it does serve. And use some of those profits to give people an excellent short-haul option in Europe. When I choose to fly a traditional carrier over a low-cost carrier, I expect an assigned seat and something to eat/drink on my flight. Maybe a free newspaper too! I do like and respect easyJet in many ways, but sometimes you want that little extra. And while we’re at it, starting a dedicated business class service from London City Airport (LCY) to New York’s JFK is a bad idea! I know there’s a huge business community in Canary Wharf, which is near to LCY, and I know BA wants to compete with Air France and the other European airlines that connect those business-people to New York via Paris or Amsterdam, but would it not be cheaper to ferry them across the city to Heathrow on a helicopter? Like they do in New York?!

One thing I’m sure of. It would benefit nobody if the company were to receive major state aid. They should be left to the market forces this time. They’ve used their dominant position to bully the rest of the British aviation sector for too long. I personally think it’s the wrong strategy to turn BA into a trumped-up low-cost airline. If the market agrees, and they can no longer survive and prosper, perhaps the government should let Lufthansa/BMI/Virgin Atlantic acquire their assets and create a profitable, efficient, and top quality flag carrier for the 21st century.

I know, it’s been a few weeks now since my last post, but I’ve been having a sabbatical of sorts. From writing, work & politics. But I’m back now.

Something really struck me over the last 24 hours, since the news “broke” that our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown had been “snubbed” by President Obama because he was unable to secure official bilaterals at the United Nations annual General Assembly in New York. Apparent insult to injury is the fact that President Obama held bilateral meetings with other heads of state/government, including Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama. I found it sad that the UK media seeks to perpetuate this image that we have an insecure Prime Minister, and using what appears to be a simple scheduling conflict to portray Brown as some kind of diplomatic “loner”. At a global summit with somewhere around 190 heads of state/government in attendance, many of whom have never visited the United States before (esp. in the case of the Japanese), surely the American President has the prerogative to choose a select number of official bilateral meetings to hold personally.

It’s a given in the 21st century that the British PM, along with his counterparts in other heavyweight countries like France and Germany, can expect special access to the US President. Britain is one of America’s strongest international allies, and time and again we’ve successfully passed many opportunities to demonstrate this. Many of the major international challenges of the 20th century have been dealt with effectively by the United States & United Kingdom side-by-side. We have a long-standing, solid relationship with the Americans, in culture, business and international relations. Maybe we have a “special” relationship because of this, but I think we should move beyond this now. This cornerstone in Britain’s global identity is out-dated and smacks of insecurity on our part. What is it exactly that drives the UK to constantly seek to be re-affirmed as America’s best friend in the world? Nobody else seems to need that affirmation, and they get along fine as international powers.

Britain’s international power-base doesn’t come from its close relationship to the US. It comes from, inter alia, our place in history, our central role in the founding of the United Nations, the fact we’re a nuclear power, the size, diversity and global reach of our economy, our cultural reach, the fact that the world’s language originated inside our shores, our strong place in the European Union. The list could go on and on. Why we must keep banging on about this “special relationship” with the United States, as important as our relationship with them is, escapes me. It’s clear that the United States only sees it as special when it’s in their strategic interest to do so. Britain is one of the most powerful countries in the world, and it does us no favour to continue with this diplomatic insecurity. I’m certain that one of the first people Barack Obama calls when he has an international challenge on his desk, and he’s looking for a reliable partner, is Gordon Brown, particularly now that the Prime Minister has demonstrated his credentials as one of the leading international thinkers on economics, a major issue of our time.

Just because he can’t find an hour to sit down at the edge of his first United Nations General Assembly, while taking care of final preparations for the American G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, after meeting Gordon Brown privately on many occasions, means very little. Except that is, to the insecure, needy, knee-jerk British media.