I meant to post about this earlier, but the weekend seemed to pass by in a flash what with other things going on and I just didn’t seem to find the time.

British Airways have had some horrific press coverage lately with the opening of their Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport going less than swimmingly. Flights seem to be getting cancelled here, there and everywhere and bags are either being taken to the wrong places or not taken anywhere at all.

It all seems pretty ordinary airport business to me, but I think it’s attracting attention simply because of the sums of money involved in building the new terminal, etc. Had this happened at an existing terminal then I doubt very much it would have garnered so much coverage.

I feel sorry for the people caught up in all this - the passengers of course, but also the staff working in the airport who are no doubt bearing the brunt of some less than pleasant exchanges with disgruntled customers.

There’s not denying that the changeover hasn’t gone according to plan - or if it has then the plan was obviously wrong in the first place! Hopefully lessons will be learned and things will progress more smoothly over the coming weeks.

But this isn’t really the subject I want to talk about - although it is the root cause.

I don’t like Alex Salmond. It’s a plain and simple fact of life - I don’t hate him or anything, I simply don’t like the man. Is it okay that I don’t like him, should I have some really solid reasons for not liking him? Probably, but that is all for another post.

This one will be brief and to the point.

He has an amazing ability to turn every story round to be about Scotland being put upon by the rest of the world, mainly England. If you haven’t seen him in action then imagine James Allen turning every conversation in ITV’s Formula 1 coverage round to include a mention of Lewis Hamilton at every opportunity.

Over the last few days due to their troubles, BA have decided it best to cancel some flights. Now if your flight is cancelled then I can understand you feeling aggrieved, but from an outsider’s point of view it seems like a good idea given that they are obviously struggling to cope at the moment.

From Salmond’s point of view he is outraged that the cancelled flights seem to mainly be ones pointing in the direction of Scotland. In his mind this means BA can’t care about Scotland and their Scottish passengers.

To my mind, if you have a choice of cancelling either a flight to Scotland or a flight to America then the choice of which to cancel would depend on other factors, not simply the destination. There are a higher volume of flights to Scotland so therefore passengers are more likely to be able to find alternative flights fairly easily. Also anyone not wanting to travel on a later flight has the option of using other forms of transport - car, bus, train etc. Someone heading to America is stuck here unless they fancy a swim.

So, while it looks on paper as though BA are picking on Scotland a little bit, and while I sympathise with those who have had their arrangements messed about by cancelled flights, I don’t think BA had any alternative but to cancel some and the Scottish ones were the obvious choice!

Alex Salmond just seems to like complaining about things, and enjoys any opportunity to appear on TV slagging off England and anything to do with it. I’m fed up with it all, but unfortunately there will have been thousands watching on TV who will have lapped it all up.