Let me ask you a question? What would you do if, as CEO of a very large and influential company and your teenage daughter and her friend were intially bumped from an over-full international flight but placed back on the flight when you protest?
Complain? Sounds kinda reasonable.
Seek compensation? Perhaps, if you want to make a point. But maybe you’re still not satisfied…
Decree that none of your 14,000 employees will fly on the airline for business? Well naturally. Acorrding to The Times that’s exactly what an angry Chris Bell, chief cigar-chewer at UK bookmakers Ladbrokes, has done. British Airways, the airline at the center of the storm, claim to have offered the two girls, who were returning from a holiday in the Bahamas with Bell, £250 each in compensation. Mr Bell, however, is quite rationally having none if it. The Times claims ‘the private dispute, which has ratcheted up into a corporate row, could cost BA up to £2 million in business and has forced Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, to intervene personally in an effort to defuse the situation.’
For their part, Ladbrokes claim ‘the way Mr Bell had been dealt with was only one of a number of issues the bookmaker had with the airline’.
[Image by zen]
Oz Traveller 