Wing and a prayer from man who broke the mould

A man with aviation fuel running through his veins, BA’s new chief executive Willie Walsh could fly before he could drive.

Walsh, 43, joined Irish national airline, Aer Lingus, as a 17-year-old cadet pilot direct from secondary school in north Dublin in 1979.

Colleagues said he used to get the bus to work before taking to the skies.

Walsh worked his way up through the ranks to become one of the Aer Lingus’ youngest captains in 1990.

He then made the rare step from the cockpit to the boardroom and was chief executive of the airline’s private charter business, Futura, from 1998 to 2000.

Walsh then took up the unenviable post of Aer Lingus Chief Executive Officer after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

His undoubted enthusiasm and drive, along with some prayers from his time as a “rather angelic” 10-year-old altar boy in High Park Convent, Drumcondra, would have served him well when he announced an unpopular 2,000 job cuts at Aer Lingus in the wake of the attacks.

Walsh warned of far-reaching cost cuts at the airline, “right down to selling the paintings on the walls”.

And he wasn’t joking.

The sale of the Jack B Yeats and Louis Le Brocquy paintings from the Dublin Airport headquarters of Aer Lingus showed he meant business.

Walsh’s radical shake-up of the commercial state company saw Aer Lingus rid itself of its full-service flag carrier status and embrace a Ryanair-style low-cost model.

Along with ending 700 temporary contracts, the workforce was reduced by almost 40%.

Financial sources said Walsh displayed intimate knowledge of Aer Lingus, inspiring confidence in his plan to move the airline to a low-cost base and re-brand as Aerlingus.com.

“He was seen as ambitious and a hard worker, and didn’t suffer fools gladly, even former colleagues,” said one industry insider.

“You might not have liked what he was doing, but you had to admire his capacity to do it,” said a former pilot colleague. “In Aer Lingus, it was unheard of to get right to the top the way he did.

“Traditionally, someone would not have been taken out of the cockpit into management. Willie broke the mould.”

Walsh, who lives in Donabate in north Dublin, keeps a low social profile, enjoying only the odd pint of Guinness locally.

An ardent Bohemians Football Club supporter, he played soccer when he lived in Palma, Majorca, during his time with Futura and has brought his pilot’s precision to his golf play at Balcarrig golf club, Donabate.

He is married and has a nine-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Walsh is sometimes referred to as a “more polite (Ryanair chief) Michael O’Leary” and the rivalry between the two bosses has played well in the media.

Walsh’s blueprint for a trimmed-down Aer Lingus has also been music to the ears of financial institutions and potential investors.

The second-oldest in a family of four children, friends of Walsh, who grew up on Sion Hill Road in north Dublin, insist his bid to buy out Aer Lingus last year was not motivated by money, but by the buzz of driving the business on.

Walsh’s proposal came amid little sign of any political momentum on the privatisation of Aer Lingus.

The vacuum left by the departure of chairman Tom Mulcahy last May could have meant delays of another year.

The management buyout (MBO) trio of Walsh, chief financial officer Brian Dunne and chief operations officer Seamus Kearney were dubbed “the three musketeers” by staff but sheathed their swords and rode off into the sunset after the government appeared reluctant to make a decision on the future of the company.

A mixture of trade union strength, the company’s national identity, established wage structures and political sensitivities has made it particularly difficult to introduce change in Aer Lingus.

When the European Commission ruled out direct state subsidies to prop up flag carriers it looked as if Aer Lingus’s fate was sealed, as it floundered with debts of €140m in 2001.

But under Walsh’s guidance, operating losses for 2001 were kept to €52m, against a forecast €90m. The company made an operating profit of €83m in 2003.

In three years Aer Lingus has gone from being an economic casualty of the post September 11 slump in air travel to being one of the most profitable airlines in Europe.

His blueprint was simple. Radical cost-cutting measures were introduced to enable the airline to survive the downturn that drove flag carriers such as the Belgian airline, Sabena, to the wall.

Walsh talked about the need for a new “mindset” and has added 35 new routes to the airline’s schedule since 2001.

“There was no way around it. It was adapt or die,” he told a specialist aviation journal.

Observers often remark on Walsh’s in-depth knowledge of the aviation sector.

“If he was on Mastermind, he could answer all questions on the aircraft industry,” one said.

“Here is someone who knows every star in the sky and how long it would take to travel to it.”