Willie Walsh needs support, not British Airways' excess baggage

The weekend pictures of the British Airways boss being surrounded by protesters who gatecrashed the talks with the Unite union only served to highlight his isolation.

Physically short, feisty and fiery, Walsh likes to play the unyielding tough guy, especially where industrial relations and the unions are concerned.

Even so, other company chiefs I know are full of admiration for the way, day after day, he has been fighting — and not just with the unions.

On volcanic ash, there's Walsh demanding with aviation officials face to face that the airspace be reopened.

On the proposed merger with Iberia, it's Walsh who is doing the explaining to a sceptical City and media.

On the airline's results, Walsh is the one left confronting the flak.

Meanwhile, in the negotiations with Unite he must contend with not one but two joint opposite numbers, in Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson. Throughout all this, you're left to question: where is the rest of the BA board?

The chairman Martin Broughton makes infrequent public interventions. Indeed, he's enjoyed a higher profile on the sports pages because he's been having showdown meetings with Rafael Benitez, the manager of Liverpool Football Club, of which he is also chairman.

I know Broughton's job at BA is part-time and it's possible that Walsh may relish playing the lone warrior, but if I were a BA investor, I would prefer him to be more prominent for helping the chief executive at the airline steer through a crisis rather than for sorting out the future of a football manager.

As for the rest of the BA non-executive directors, they might as well not exist for all the public support they are giving Walsh.

Broughton will say that's not his function, that he manages the board and Walsh, the company. Likewise, the non-executives will maintain that they are not appointed to get involved with the day-to-day issues facing the company; they, like Broughton, are there to represent the shareholders' interests.

But, I repeat, if I were an investor, I would be far from convinced that they are working their socks off at a time of great uncertainty for the business.

I would want to know what, exactly, they are doing for their money. I would also like them to be seen to put their shoulders to the wheel and assist the CEO and his executive management.

Perhaps there is some other agenda at work — that they prefer to remain in the background, letting Walsh take the heat, because they want to see where it ends. If Walsh proves too aggressive and the investors give the nod, he may have to be replaced.

It's true that Walsh is not to everyone's taste. He is a very different character, say, from his popular, debonair predecessor, Sir Rod Eddington.

But Walsh wasn't hired because he was nice. He was appointed to do a specific task, which was to remove costs and sort out the working practices that had so dogged BA's progress, something incidentally, that Eddington, for all his style, failed to do.

Indeed, it was Eddington himself who personally recruited Walsh to do just that. He'd tried and done moderately well but he recognised that BA industrial relations had not been properly tackled and what was required was someone to stare down the unions and sort them out once and for all.

Walsh isn't a smooth operator (as Broughton is). He doesn't have a pedigree burnished on the London business and political networking circuit.
It's hard to imagine him, for instance, going on to become president of the CBI, like Broughton.

Nevertheless, he surely deserves better than he is receiving at present.