IAG- The owner of the BA and Iberia Brands, a month on.

On February 11th Airnthere speculated about how life might be for IAG in its new Head office on the northside of Heathrow and its constituent brands, BA and Iberia. How independent would they be and how much would they be ruled from within the owning company? IAG's CEO Wille Walsh is not after all known for a hands off approach.

A month or so on we now have a few blips on the radar screen to help us start to fix a position. Both confirm that life at Waterside (BA) and in Madrid (Iberia ) could get a little stressful.

The first blip is an interview of Walsh by FLIGHTGLOBAL which confirms that he has not wasted much time in his new office,-or corner of the office,-watching the arrivals and departures on Heathrow's northern runway. He says "The way we see IAG impacting on BA and Iberia is partly about co-ordination but also where necessary CONTROL" .(The capitals are ours). That's a word that Keith Williams and his Spanish oppo in Madrid will not have wanted to hear, though they will certainly have expected it.

Interestingly , further into FLIGHTGLOBAL's interview comes the IAG stage 1 Mission Statement. Usually these things provide the clear and inspiring vision, the banner to which all staff can rally and for which they enthusiastically leap out of bed on Monday mornings. They encompass pledges like "To be the best/biggest/most profitable/have the widest network/be most loved by customers/innovative/ staff friendly" and so on. They provide the bedrock of an ethos which determines style energy and sense of purpose and mean that everyone knows the starting point for decisions and actions. Sadly, not so in this case. He says "The stage 1 mission for IAG is fairly clear-cut, to achieve 400 million Euro in annual synergies by year five". Stretch ,yawn. Functionally correct maybe but nothing here to enthuse,excite, motivate, guide the staff at all levels upon whom success will depend. It all sounds a bit graunchy and possibly unpleasant.Anything remotely emotional, warm or cuddly appears to be out.

Walsh also says he believes that IAG's constituent members have a lot to offer potential partners". Hmm,-like "Please step into our web but forget about any chance of being the Spider or even the Spider's deputy". Maybe we are missing something but on the face of it it doesn't have a persuasive ring about it to a Board of another successful independent business.Maybe IAG just doesn't quite understand people and their motivation yet?

Putting these obeservations aside, the other interesting radar blip was Walsh's recent statement that the fleet priority is doing something about Iberia's 36 strong A340-300 and -600 fleets. Some of the latter are very recent and neither fleet is likely to command a good resale price. This may disturb those at BA whose 57 (7 "resting") strong 747-400 fleet's oldest members are now 20+ years old with little other than 6 777-300s and , over time from 2013, 12 A380s coming along to increase capacity or even just replace them. The 787s on order look like straight one for one replacements for the 767s. Clearly competition for the resources they want is going to be a major concern for the two brands and it is clear that they are in reality, just that, two divisions of an overarching company which will be calling the real shots. Again not a very attractive proposition for potential future "partners". More of all this before long we are sure as more blips appear on the screen and the picture becomes more three dimensional. These are very early days.