If you're in aviation, it doesn't get much better. It's Heathrow, a beautiful new terminal is open and the first flight takes to the skies. "What a joy this is going to be for passengers and staff," said Sir Anthony Millward, chairman of BA forerunner BEA, on the opening of Terminal 1 in 1968.
But when BA's CEO, Willie Walsh, found himself addressing staff and the media in 2008, the Terminal 5 experience wasn't quite the same perfect moment and, 40 years on, Walsh found himself in a very different position to Millward.
The British Airports Authority (BAA) may own and manage T5, but it was BA that was pilloried for the debacle, caused by a forgotten software filter in BAA's baggage handling systems. Walsh shouldered the responsibility and was extraordinarily frank during the Parliamentary Transport Committee's enquiry into T5.
With BA taking the blame, on the morning of 27 March, 2008, was there any IT chief not wondering if BA's global CIO, Paul Coby, was about to become history? Passionate about BA, he's survived huge corporate ructions over the last 12 years but did he ever consider quitting over T5?
"No," he says. "I never contemplated resigning. BA's systems and IT infrastructure worked perfectly from day one. The principal IT problems were in BAA's baggage systems. It was their accountability and the accountability of their suppliers. The [parliamentary] report makes clear the software for the baggage system is provided by BAA, their contractor Vanderlande and their subcontractor IBM. This is not BA software. The baggage system is designed as a complete ‘black box' that is provided to BA as the occupier of T5."
Walsh set an example of leadership in his dealings with the Parliamentary Committee that every failed banking CEO in front of the Treasury Select Committee should follow. While that toxic crew denied any personal culpability for creating the economic maelstrom that is wrecking the globe, Walsh acknowledged that risks had been sanctioned by him and, with hindsight, the opening should have been delayed to allow for more training and familiarisation for BA staff. He apologised to customers, and Coby mirrored the approach soon after when he spoke at a Forrester Research event, saying: "BA as a company apologises for the problems that we may have caused many of you travelling through Terminal 5.'
Why did BA's CEO and Coby, now Global CIO and Head of Financial Shared Services, take such a high-profile approach? Coby says: "The ‘mea culpa' is, in my view, unavoidable, honourable and the right thing to do and, when I talk to people who were there, they recognise that."
Human face
It's in character. When CIO published Coby's article entitled "50 Things I wish I'd known before becoming a CIO" a couple of years ago, number five on the list was entitled ‘Try to be human'. "People expect a lot from CIOs. They want leadership but prefer to work with someone who is not afraid to show that they have emotions too. Admit to making mistakes," he wrote. A final thought was that "if you're not scared as a CIO, you either lack imagination or don't run the IT ... We have another big lever to pull when we open T5 at Heathrow and that's terrifying."
And so it proved, but many CIOs still question BA's decision to take the flak on T5. They argue that BAA's one customer at T5, BA, shouldn't be getting it in the neck but should instead be receiving massive recompense based on service-level availability penalty clauses. Coby's take is that the customer should always come first.
"Everyone in BA recognised that it does not matter to our customers where the problems were - they paid good money, bought tickets from BA and deserved to have a great travel experience, which we did not deliver. Lessons had to be learned. How big cutovers [IT system transfers] are done is not just about IT issues - it is a whole interconnected system. We accepted responsibility for what happened to our customers because that was, and -remains, our primary accountability."
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