Murnaghan 30.03.14 Interview with Lord Glendonbrook, former head of British Midland Airways

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now ten aircraft and eight ships are now searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, all the while the families of those on board of course wait for any answers.  So how does an airline deal with a situation like this and how might it begin to recover?  Well Michael Bishop owned British Midland, now BMI, for 30 years and was in charge during two air disasters.  Michael Bishop is now of course Lord Glendonbrook and he joins me now, a very good morning to you.  Obviously we are discussing a very sad subject and if we can discuss it through the prism of particularly your experience, it was 25 years ago since the Kegworth M1 air disaster isn’t it, but it was thought at the time – and I remember, I was a fledgling journalist – just how well you and the airline dealt with that.  You learnt about it very quickly, didn’t your secretary ring you up to tell you what had happened, she’d heard a bang?

LORD GLENDONBROOK: Yes, her house was near the end of the runway and she phoned me up and said this aircraft passed far too low over my house and I’m sure it’s going to crash and it did.  I was able to be on the scene within about 45 minutes. 

DM: And then what’s first and foremost in your mind?  You’re in charge of a big company here, you must be thinking oh my goodness me, we’ve got to protect that but your thoughts have got to be the killed, the injured and the relatives. 

LORD GLENDONBROOK: I think in the public transport industry you always have to be aware that at any moment that telephone will ring and that there may be news of that kind.  In my case, in a 42 year career, it happened twice, once before I owned the airline but was working for it and secondly when I was the controlling shareholder of the business and I learnt a lot from the first accident. 

DM: Well let’s talk about that one, this is the 60s and Stockport.  Not a lot of people remember that, what happened? 

LORD GLENDONBROOK: No, this was in the days when jet aviation was fledgling and there were a lot of propeller and turboprop aircraft around and one Sunday morning, I was 25 and the telephone rang at home, I still lived with my parents and I ran a small handling unit at Manchester Airport, a very small airport in those days indeed and indeed one of our aircraft had crashed in the centre of Stockport and killed 72 people.  I think the difference between both the accidents which I handled and this one is that both occasions the aircraft were in the UK and both were near airports and the real landmark of this particular accident, the baffling part of it, was that it should have happened in such a remote part of the world and I think, I’ve been thinking over the last few days how I would have handled it in this situation.

DM: But what marked you out at the Kegworth one was just how genuine you were, the problem with MH370 is the relatives feel they are not in the loop, that there is some information that they’re not being given.  Was your first thought at Kegworth, if I know it, you will know it, we will keep you in that loop?

LORD GLENDONBROOK: Yes, I think the important thing really is when something like this happens your brain and head goes into a completely different sector.  There is an adrenaline of really energy which actually you just concentrate solely on the job in hand and I think also, especially as a commercial business, your immediate concern – and certainly in our case in 1982 we had only just in 1982 come on to the major trunk routes in competition with British Airways – actually you’ve got a reputation as a business that was at stake and I think the accident would have been a make or break for the business and it had to be done differently to the episode in Lockerbie which was very difficult to handle with a terrorist explosion, the Clapham rail disaster which had preceded that where the railways at the time mainly walked away from it and the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, so something different had to be done on this occasion.  Actually I was told within 24 hours that the insurance company, there would be difficulties processing our claim if we made any expression of liability or compensation to the passengers and I decided to overrule that and I gave every passenger £2500 on the day to look after their personal difficulties by not having possibly the breadwinner of the family available and to deal immediately with rent, with looking after aged people, putting the dog into kennels, all sorts of the minutiae of daily life which people are suddenly faced with in an accident of this kind.  Now of course it didn’t affect the insurance claim and also I think it was very, very important that straight up front we said how profoundly sorry we were for the accident and we were going to do everything we could to look after the relatives.  Now  I wouldn’t like to transpose those specifically into this particular accident.

DM: No, but there are some interesting lessons.  Lastly, with your vast experience, have you got any thoughts about what might have happened to MH370?

LORD GLENDONBROOK: No, I haven’t but what I do think is that actually the public do trust the airline industry because we have done remarkable things in the aircraft industry in bringing safety to the passengers.  I mean the number of people killed in accidents annually is tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of people who fly.  This is a terrible accident for those who are closely involved with it but you have to get your arm around these issues straight away and I think fortunately because we were in the UK we were able to do that.  I think actually the people who have appeared from Malaysian Airlines have acted with dignity in a very provocative situation for them.  I assume that what they have said is correct but I think that … I can’t think of an airline that could have dealt with it any differently not knowing where the aircraft was.

DM: Lord Glendonbrook, thank you very much indeed for allowing us to tap into your considerable expertise, very good to see you, thank you very much.