Roads to Resilience

infrastructure on the ground. I think we would go where we feel that, first of all, there is demand, but also where we feel that we can add value to the local marketplace, by offering our Virgin Atlantic products and services. Obviously, we wouldn’t fly at all costs, but we generally find ways to manage our risk and to make it an acceptable operation for us ” (Director of Operations, Safety and Security). Members of Virgin’s Safety and Security team, as well as a number of other senior managers, have government security clearance. This enables them to contribute to industry and government platforms dealing with security threats and risks. The team also has close links with the SAS Counter – Terrorist Wing, military liaison people and other agencies. Through these relationships Virgin has an accurate picture of the landscape of threats. Further, people throughout the organisation are regularly trained on safety and security, which means the number of eyes and ears the members of the Safety and Security team effectively have on the ground around the world is many thousands. Aided by modern communication technologies, this means that Virgin’s Safety and Security team may even know about events in the world before government intelligence agencies do: “ For example, when the Mumbai bombings happened, our airport manager in India picked up the phone and told us that these bombs had started going off. Literally within five minutes of that happening, we phoned the information through to a number of UK government departments who at that time were not aware that the event was occurring ” (Head of Corporate Security and Resilience). Commercial entities have a key role to play in the prompt reporting of global incidents. With safety and security paramount to Virgin’s reputation, the Safety and Security team are empowered to delay and stop flights to particular destinations or to put a restriction on cargo from particular countries: “ If I think it is unsafe or not secure, I can say we are going to stop it until I’m satisfied that the situation is safe and secure enough. I have cost this business a lot of money, but the risk of getting it wrong, the knock-on effects, we could go out of business ” (Head of Corporate Security and Resilience). As aviation costs are very high and competitive pressures intense, airlines can only succeed long-term by maximising the use of all their aircraft on routes with high demand, and doing so as efficiently as possible. This requires a compelling product and the ability, from an airport slot allocation perspective, to operate flights to and from a range of different destinations. Further, to reduce the impact of high and volatile fuel prices on profit margins, it requires modern, fuel-efficient aircraft. Some airlines prefer to buy their aircraft. Others, like Virgin Atlantic, lease the majority of their fleet, as this offers the advantage of being able to replace economically unattractive aircraft quickly and easily. With such strategies in place, the challenge becomes avoiding and/or minimising significant disruption to operations. When something does go wrong, the desire is to know as early as possible about the event and to respond in a controlled and considered manner. Structure, process and external relationships play a key role in this, but also everyone’s ability to timely identify and effectively deal with risks. As the consequences of getting it wrong can be significant, the company takes risk management very seriously. For example, Virgin Atlantic runs ‘safe and secure’ culture programmes for the whole company: “ I always say to Strategy, tactics and operations

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Appendix A Case study: Virgin Atlantic