The Skirl o’ the Pipes . . . .
British Caledonian was, because of its Scottish heritage, in love with all things tartan, which of course meant that the uniforms were just about the best there has ever been. The sight of a girl standing at the top of the aircraft steps, ‘somewhere in Africa’, in her crisp white blouse and her kilt has been known to make many an ex-pat go weak at the knees. Anyway I digress, because what BCAL also had was its very own pipe band. At the drop of a hat, or the start of a new route to some far flung corner of the world the pipers were dispatched to stir the hearts of everyone and hopefully make them buy more tickets.
When a new route was inaugurated the pipe band became a focal point of the airline’s activities in the new destination city. The pipe band were clever, they always learned a new tune with particular links to the new destination so that they could play it at events around the new route start up. When BCAL began flying to Houston they played ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ while walking along the main street of the downtown area. Next thing you know they are all over the TV with local stations oooo-ing and ahhhhh-ing over this wonderful new Scottish/British airline.
When BCAL began flying to Atlanta I was asked to ‘keep an eye on’ the band during their time in the city while the more important BCAL employees got on with the job of schmoozing the local bigwigs and the guests on the inaugural service. A huge reception was planned in the ballroom of the Omni Hotel and the band and I went through what they would do. They planned to walk around the balcony area before descending the steps of the ballroom to entertain the thousand or so guests. We didn’t talk about what songs they were going to play. That was my big mistake.
That night, with the great and the good of Atlanta, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, assembled in the ballroom, it came time for the band to enter. I was standing next to the BCAL chairman, Adam Thomson. First we heard the muffled strains of the pipes before the band entered the top level of the room proudly playing ‘Scotland the Brave’. As the band got to the steps and started to descend the Chairman turned to me and said, ‘Well done, aren’t they marvellous.’
As I was about to reply the pipers began playing the special song they had learned for Atlanta. ‘Oh my God,’ was all I could say. ‘What? What is it?’ said Adam Thomson. ‘This song, you know what it is don’t you? It’s “Marching through Georgia”, the song the Union troops whistled and sang as they burnt Atlanta during the American Civil War.’
I thought he was going to have a seizure. I was lucky to survive that one, because somehow it became all my fault.
Getting Bogged Down
When British Airways began the first no-booking service in Europe, it operated between London and Glasgow. It was a dark day for its major competitor British Caledonian, which operated on the same route, except that it served Gatwick rather than Heathrow. The problem was not just that it provided an easy and convenient way to travel but from a marketing standpoint people just talked about the Glasgow Shuttle and even if the nearest airport was Gatwick, somehow the Heathrow route became the way to fly to Scotland. Things got worse when BA opened a Shuttle service to Edinburgh.
In the early 1980s I was given the job of trying to revive the loss-making services that BCAL flew within the UK; it was a daunting task. There were all sorts of issues that needed to be addressed but not the least of them was the whole image of BCAL’s domestic routes. Also significant was the marketing of BA’s Shuttle, quite a zippy little concept, as opposed to British Caledonian Domestic flights. I came up with the idea of rebranding the flights within the UK as BCAL Commuter, which was after all what many of our passengers were doing, and I involved some of the other small airlines that flew into Gatwick in the scheme. It was a co-operative marketing effort, which would hopefully benefit all of us.
Naturally one of the most important things to be done was to get people using the name as soon as possible. We did not have deep enough pockets to advertise the product to achieve our objectives and so PR was going to
have to play an important role. I set about meeting some of the key journalists in the trade press as well as the nationals. One day I had a meeting with the editor of one magazine and spent a lot of time with him explaining our strategic moves, the benefits, the challenges that we faced and felt pretty pleased when I got to the nub of the matter.
‘The thing is that BA’s Shuttle is such a strong brand, we struggle to have any brand recognition. Let’s face it, British Caledonian Domestic sounds like something you put down the toilet to clean it.’ I’m sure I added that this was just for background and an off-the-record quote.
Well the inevitable happened, a week later out came the magazine with a banner headline. ‘British Caledonian Domestic Can Clean Your Toilet.’ Thirty seconds after I had seen the headline I knew I was in deep trouble. My phone rang; it was the Chairman’s secretary. ‘The Chairman wants to see you . . . now.’ I got no further than the door to his office. He tore me off such a strip that I was worried that if I got any closer I might suffer third-degree burns - that’s how red in the face he was. I think I remember him saying something about me having to clean the toilets unless I was very, very careful.
Lions and Donkeys
British Caledonian’s position as the chief competitor to British Airways, in those far-off days when government regulation stood in the way of competition, kept the two airlines from flying head to head with each other on just about every single long-haul route. That was until British Caledonian somehow managed to persuade the Civil Aviation Authority to allow it to compete with BA on the lucrative London-Hong Kong route.
Elaborate plans were laid for the start of the service and as usual there was an inaugural flight, on which the great and the good travelled with BCAL’s Chairman Sir Adam Thomson, to what was then still a British colony. To celebrate that first flight business leaders and diplomats, both British and Chinese, had organised a gala dinner at which those who had travelled from London were joined by the cream of Hong Kong society. Sir Adam gave a speech in which he told the assembled crowd about what had motivated BCAL to apply to fly to Hong Kong. ‘Our planners and market research people saw a chink in the market’, was his simple explanation.
One of Sir Adam’s colleagues on the BCAL board on another occasion justified an increase in flights to West Africa by explaining that there had been a ‘vast influx of Lesbian traders’, into many of the countries along the coast. He meant Lebanese, and was totally unaware of his spoonerism.
A third member of the board of BCAL gave some wonderful insight into how an airline decides on what new destinations it should serve, or not, as the case may be. The company was in the process of thinking about flying
from London to Denver and had done a great deal of research into the size of the market - the possibility was looking very attractive. Or it was until the company’s sales director sent his opposite number on the BCAL board
responsible for planning a memo with his views on the potential:
‘I was returning from Los Angeles to London last week and our non-stop flight took us overhead Denver. We were at around 35,000 feet and it was a beautiful clear evening and I could see the whole of the city clearly. I must say it didn’t look like a very big place to me and I would counsel against starting a new route, one on which we will inevitably fail to make any money.’
If you enjoyed them, why not head back and have a go at winning one of the 5 copies we have available
Good luck
British Caledonian was, because of its Scottish heritage, in love with all things tartan, which of course meant that the uniforms were just about the best there has ever been. The sight of a girl standing at the top of the aircraft steps, ‘somewhere in Africa’, in her crisp white blouse and her kilt has been known to make many an ex-pat go weak at the knees. Anyway I digress, because what BCAL also had was its very own pipe band. At the drop of a hat, or the start of a new route to some far flung corner of the world the pipers were dispatched to stir the hearts of everyone and hopefully make them buy more tickets.
When a new route was inaugurated the pipe band became a focal point of the airline’s activities in the new destination city. The pipe band were clever, they always learned a new tune with particular links to the new destination so that they could play it at events around the new route start up. When BCAL began flying to Houston they played ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ while walking along the main street of the downtown area. Next thing you know they are all over the TV with local stations oooo-ing and ahhhhh-ing over this wonderful new Scottish/British airline.
When BCAL began flying to Atlanta I was asked to ‘keep an eye on’ the band during their time in the city while the more important BCAL employees got on with the job of schmoozing the local bigwigs and the guests on the inaugural service. A huge reception was planned in the ballroom of the Omni Hotel and the band and I went through what they would do. They planned to walk around the balcony area before descending the steps of the ballroom to entertain the thousand or so guests. We didn’t talk about what songs they were going to play. That was my big mistake.
That night, with the great and the good of Atlanta, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, assembled in the ballroom, it came time for the band to enter. I was standing next to the BCAL chairman, Adam Thomson. First we heard the muffled strains of the pipes before the band entered the top level of the room proudly playing ‘Scotland the Brave’. As the band got to the steps and started to descend the Chairman turned to me and said, ‘Well done, aren’t they marvellous.’
As I was about to reply the pipers began playing the special song they had learned for Atlanta. ‘Oh my God,’ was all I could say. ‘What? What is it?’ said Adam Thomson. ‘This song, you know what it is don’t you? It’s “Marching through Georgia”, the song the Union troops whistled and sang as they burnt Atlanta during the American Civil War.’
I thought he was going to have a seizure. I was lucky to survive that one, because somehow it became all my fault.
Getting Bogged Down
When British Airways began the first no-booking service in Europe, it operated between London and Glasgow. It was a dark day for its major competitor British Caledonian, which operated on the same route, except that it served Gatwick rather than Heathrow. The problem was not just that it provided an easy and convenient way to travel but from a marketing standpoint people just talked about the Glasgow Shuttle and even if the nearest airport was Gatwick, somehow the Heathrow route became the way to fly to Scotland. Things got worse when BA opened a Shuttle service to Edinburgh.
In the early 1980s I was given the job of trying to revive the loss-making services that BCAL flew within the UK; it was a daunting task. There were all sorts of issues that needed to be addressed but not the least of them was the whole image of BCAL’s domestic routes. Also significant was the marketing of BA’s Shuttle, quite a zippy little concept, as opposed to British Caledonian Domestic flights. I came up with the idea of rebranding the flights within the UK as BCAL Commuter, which was after all what many of our passengers were doing, and I involved some of the other small airlines that flew into Gatwick in the scheme. It was a co-operative marketing effort, which would hopefully benefit all of us.
Naturally one of the most important things to be done was to get people using the name as soon as possible. We did not have deep enough pockets to advertise the product to achieve our objectives and so PR was going to
have to play an important role. I set about meeting some of the key journalists in the trade press as well as the nationals. One day I had a meeting with the editor of one magazine and spent a lot of time with him explaining our strategic moves, the benefits, the challenges that we faced and felt pretty pleased when I got to the nub of the matter.
‘The thing is that BA’s Shuttle is such a strong brand, we struggle to have any brand recognition. Let’s face it, British Caledonian Domestic sounds like something you put down the toilet to clean it.’ I’m sure I added that this was just for background and an off-the-record quote.
Well the inevitable happened, a week later out came the magazine with a banner headline. ‘British Caledonian Domestic Can Clean Your Toilet.’ Thirty seconds after I had seen the headline I knew I was in deep trouble. My phone rang; it was the Chairman’s secretary. ‘The Chairman wants to see you . . . now.’ I got no further than the door to his office. He tore me off such a strip that I was worried that if I got any closer I might suffer third-degree burns - that’s how red in the face he was. I think I remember him saying something about me having to clean the toilets unless I was very, very careful.
Lions and Donkeys
British Caledonian’s position as the chief competitor to British Airways, in those far-off days when government regulation stood in the way of competition, kept the two airlines from flying head to head with each other on just about every single long-haul route. That was until British Caledonian somehow managed to persuade the Civil Aviation Authority to allow it to compete with BA on the lucrative London-Hong Kong route.
Elaborate plans were laid for the start of the service and as usual there was an inaugural flight, on which the great and the good travelled with BCAL’s Chairman Sir Adam Thomson, to what was then still a British colony. To celebrate that first flight business leaders and diplomats, both British and Chinese, had organised a gala dinner at which those who had travelled from London were joined by the cream of Hong Kong society. Sir Adam gave a speech in which he told the assembled crowd about what had motivated BCAL to apply to fly to Hong Kong. ‘Our planners and market research people saw a chink in the market’, was his simple explanation.
One of Sir Adam’s colleagues on the BCAL board on another occasion justified an increase in flights to West Africa by explaining that there had been a ‘vast influx of Lesbian traders’, into many of the countries along the coast. He meant Lebanese, and was totally unaware of his spoonerism.
A third member of the board of BCAL gave some wonderful insight into how an airline decides on what new destinations it should serve, or not, as the case may be. The company was in the process of thinking about flying
from London to Denver and had done a great deal of research into the size of the market - the possibility was looking very attractive. Or it was until the company’s sales director sent his opposite number on the BCAL board
responsible for planning a memo with his views on the potential:
‘I was returning from Los Angeles to London last week and our non-stop flight took us overhead Denver. We were at around 35,000 feet and it was a beautiful clear evening and I could see the whole of the city clearly. I must say it didn’t look like a very big place to me and I would counsel against starting a new route, one on which we will inevitably fail to make any money.’
If you enjoyed them, why not head back and have a go at winning one of the 5 copies we have available
Good luck
In-flight Confidential
A few examples of stories in this new book, some of the author's favourites featuring British Caledonian
A few examples of stories in this new book, some of the author's favourites featuring British Caledonian
