What do you expect when you complain to the office of a chief executive?

An email telling you that your complaint has been passed to the relevant department perhaps? Or more likely a vacuous missive pumped up with empty guff about "issues...challenges...lessons will be learned"?

Well that's not what I got when I had cause to complain directly to the boss of WH Smith, Stephen Clarke.

Our local WH Smith branch has always admitted dogs on the not unreasonable grounds that their owners might buy the odd publication or two. This changed suddenly when I visited the branch with canine company and was challenged by a junior staff member who told me dogs were not allowed in the store.

I pointed out that this had never been the case before and was a complete shock. He was polite, but explained that a new manager had arrived and implemented a no-dogs policy.

What was I to do? Surely a people-friendly terrier should be able to visit his local newsagent, even if he has a human in tow?

A short trawl delivered up the office email address of Stephen Clarke, who has been CEO of WH Smith since July 2013. I outlined the situation, adding that local dog-owners were already venting their ire in a popular online forum.

Within an hour a reply dropped. I opened it expecting a bland acknowledgement from a PA. What I got was a first-class example of no-nonsense hands-on management and straight talking. I'll leave the rest to the man himself.

I am the owner of four dogs. 
This policy is bonkers and it will be changed. I apologise. 
I am out of the office at the minute but I have copied our stores director, Kevin Hall, who will sort it. 

That's the way to go. And I love the use of "bonkers". No tiptoeing around the fact, just a heartfelt  acknowledgement that a daft error has occurred and will be reversed pronto.

The corporate world could take note of this. It has certainly gone down well with a lot of WH Smith's customers in this part of West London. Keep it short and get to the point without obfuscation. That's the way to talk to your customers. All of them, including the four-legged ones.

Oh dear! There's been a dust-up in Montana. Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow, a runaway success story in the software stakes, has been charged with assaulting Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the Guardian. Gianforte is running for Congress in his home state of Montana and the Guardian has been pursuing his Republican campaign with predictable liberal zeal.

The exact nature of the confrontation is in dispute. Gianforte's staff claim Jacobs forced his way into an office while the Guardian's man says he was knocked to the ground after asking a question. The incident was witnessed by a team from Fox News, who lean towards Jacobs' version of events.

Now I've met Gianforte. I interviewed him over dinner and got a good feel for a highly thoughtful guy who didn't go into politics on a whim. He's a passionate believer in education and educational standards. He took his family on an extensive tour of Europe to give his kids a proper perspective on this continent's history and culture. In other words, he's not straight out of the box of technology-obsessed and dollar-fixated CEOs who can talk of nothing except their business strategy. And he is polite.

Nose for news

So what went wrong? Gianforte was coming to the end of a gruelling political campaign and a journalist turned up at his office and seized on an opportunity to conduct an impromptu interview. All politicians like to restrict  media contact to scheduled appointments. These allow them to get a good steer on what will be under discussion. But journalists are trained to make the most of any chance to interview significant players. The terrier instinct to chase down a story is what makes a news reporter, any news reporter.

The Guardian's man may well have been downright annoying, as Gianforte's camp claims, but he was doing what the media does best. He was trying to get behind the official script and catch a glimpse of the candidate's real opinions. That, in case Gianforte's media advisors have forgotten, is what journalists do.

Better options

How should Gianforte have responded? Well, getting physical has generated headlines that do not bode well for his political ambitions. The incident has raised a storm right when Montanans are heading to the polls. And a serious politician can expect to have to answer questions out of the blue. No matter how irritating the sight and sound of a journalist materialising in front of his desk may have been, Gianforte had better options.

He could have pointed out that he was immersed in campaign work and referred Jacobs to his team to schedule an interview after the Fox people had been seen. Better still, he might have complemented Jacobs on his initiative in sneaking past the gatekeepers. A bit of humour always goes down well with journalists and is a diplomatic way of sidestepping a tough question that pops up at the worst possible moment. And of course, he could always have answered the question. 

Everyone loses their cool from time to time. And this includes members of the press. I've witnessed some spectacular eruptions of journalistic ire. But if you're in the media spotlight you have to be consistent. That means granting time to titles you may not like. Every interview is an opportunity to win a critic over. There is nothing to be gained from flying off the handle except negative coverage and a vortex of social media reaction that obscures your chosen messages.

This story has legs. At the latest count Gianforte has crossed the finish line in Montana with over 50% of votes cast. But the congressman elect is facing a misdemeanor assault charge. So an altercation in Montana will attract a global media audience as it goes to court. That's the other problem with a flash of temper. It can trigger a cascade of media interest that just won't go away.

I'm writing two pieces for the FT's Corporate Aviation report. Please note that the emphasis of article 2 has changed since the original commission.

1/
The Internet has changed the behaviour of customers, creating transparency over flight prices and availability. Now bookings arrive at much shorter notice and customers have a real choice in the market. How has the private jet market adapted to the new breed of customers? Are these customers getting the service they require?

For this article I'm interested in hearing from anyone in the private aviation world about how their customer base is evolving and what that means for jet hire businesses. This article appeared in the FT on 24 May 2016.

2/
Innovation. The business aviation sector sells its services on the basis of convenience and advanced technology. The prospects for a supersonic business jet have grabbed headlines, but what new ideas are on the horizon for corporate aviation? How will manufacturers differentiate their products in the coming decade? The ownership of company jets has proved problematic for some businesses. Can the industry find ways of repackaging aviation services so they do not appear indefensible to shareholders?  

For this article I want to hear honest and informed opinions about any way in which corporate aircraft are evolving over the next decade. This article appeared in the FT on 24 May 2016.

I will be on holiday for the week of May 2, returning to my desk on Monday May 9. I need to complete both articles by May 11 at the very latest so I will be interviewing on Friday April 29 and then on May 9 and May 10. Please send in suggested interview subjects as soon as possible and I will reply to relevant messages either on April 29 or on May 9.

Sixty years ago on March 10 sharp-eyed schoolboy planespotters and indignant glasshouse owners reported loud bangs, shattered panes and high altitude vapour trails over Hampshire and Sussex. They were on the verge of cracking a huge official secret. A British pilot, Peter Twiss, had flown a small jet with the pure lines of a paper dart at over 1,000 mph. Twenty-four tense hours later the Royal Aero Club felt its stringent rules were satisfied and a new world air speed record was announced. For the last time ever the top honour in aviation returned to Britain, and a country wrestling with the disintegration of empire and imminent loss of global status could bask in the glory of beating the USA.
 
This is a story of blood, sweat and pies that could only have taken place in Fifties Britain. It involves predictably dull bureaucrats who frowned on the sheer frivolity of speed records and a burgeoning cast of extras who assembled the infrastructure vital to prove the facts of the flight. Above all, the whole saga unfolded behind obsessive secrecy. Twiss and his colleagues were oblivious to Russian espionage, but they were convinced that the merest inkling of what was going on would spur on their bitter rivals in the States to steal the thunder of a sustained supersonic flight.
 
Speaking before his death 2011 Twiss’s memories were allied to an emotional detachment that qualified him for a test pilot’s job. But the transatlantic threat was still enough to raise his hackles. “If the Americans had got wind of it they would have gone after the record straightaway, they would have put it out of our reach.” The economic superpower cast a long shadow over Twiss’s world, where his employer, planemaker Fairey, had to persuade its customer, the Ministry of Supply, to relinquish ownership of the Fairey Delta 2 (FD2) in order to take a shot at the record.

A family-owned business with a long pedigree in aviation and a strong regard for personal courage found itself going head to head with sensible civil servants who reeled at the cost of competing in the jet age. Favours were called in, pressure was applied, ears were bent, and it does sound as if some rules were quietly ignored. “Oh yes,” Twiss recalled cheerfully, “we had to take the aircraft on our own charge, we almost paid to hire it. In flying terms it was a bit of fresh air, but financially it was an expensive thing to stage. The people at the Air Ministry didn’t see the point of it.”
 
Behind the romantic gesture of racing towards the record both Twiss and Fairey had their eyes on potential development of the design as a profitable fighter. But it seemed that nothing could spark the imagination of Whitehall. “The high-ups just were not interested. A lot of people saw it as excessive. We obviously, did not.” Twiss had realised that the pace of progress and the pressures on spending in Britain meant this was the UK’s last chance to seize the trophy for a few golden months. Officials who washed their hands of the bid were governed by post-imperial gloom. “The feeling from them was why do this when there are more difficult things going on in the world.”
 
His team was a collection of colleagues, cooperative RAF officers and one senior official of the old General Post Office (GPO),  forerunner of BT. Flying at high speed was no challenge at all. The technical feat to be mastered was measuring the record bid from the ground and proving beyond doubt that Twiss had sustained the right speed on two successive runs while flying straight and level over a 9.5 mile course at 38,000 feet. This demanded launching the plane through an invisible gate in the sky and holding that exact altitude for the next 30 seconds without stealing extra velocity by dipping the nose.

Two cameras on the ground seven miles below had to catch the aircraft and time the run precisely. This meant linking up the improvised sites in an era of village telephone exchanges all managed by the GPO. Using a cover story invented by a contact in the GPO Fairey conscripted a mass of telephone engineers who converged on Southern England in little green vans to install a temporary rural phone network.
 
The mission proceeded under the codename Operation Metrical, but behind the secret classification Twiss struggled to cope with a Cinderella budget and an obsessive fear of opening a newspaper to read of a lightning strike on the record by the dreaded Americans. The idea of two wartime allies standing shoulder to shoulder against the spectre of Communism got short shrift from Twiss. “They were far more secretive than we were.” Surely the camaraderie of test pilots pushing the edges of manned flight eclipsed such surly attitudes? “We weren’t communicating with them, the camps were divided” was Twiss’s abrupt and damning verdict.
 
To kick off the speed run he had to rendezvous with a camera ship acting as an independent witness. This called for a tubby and ungainly two seater jet to marry up with the elegant silver creation Twiss refers to affectionately as “the little delta.” The resulting double act was a comical sight, “a Fred Karno formation.” A modern fast jet pilot gets  computerised data fired onto a digital display right in front of him. Twiss was not so spoilt. “There were about 10 instruments, of which two or three were vital, the rest were of practical assistance.” This spartan set-up suited him. “I think you can waste a lot of money on that sort of thing.” He glanced at the view once, taking in a crystal clear day and the French coast 70 miles away, before going for the record with one eye on the fuel gauge and the need to make a second run to comply with international rules.
 
The atmospheric conditions were perfect for the camera teams below, and Twiss accomplished the double run and made it back to earth with the bare minimum of fuel. Then the trauma started. Terrestrial cameras had captured the double vapour trail Twiss laid across the blue March skies, but not the hurtling plane itself. It was the following morning before a phone call established that judges could gauge Twiss’s average speed of 1,132 mph from the vapour trail alone.

The hours in between were an unusual moment of introspection for Twiss, believing the bid had failed he examined whether winning the record really mattered. The continuing need for secrecy saw him facing the “soul-destroying” prospect of bearing failure alone, comforted only by a “solitary beer and pie”.  In the event, he became a temporary hero in an age when pilots and aircraft were the subject of saloon bar chat. It was rare good news in a year that was about to bring national humiliation and painful proof of American clout at Suez. 
 
In the long term his passing doubts about the value of the project were prophetic. A 1957 government policy verging on crass stupidity decreed that manned fighters had no future in an age of guided missiles and Fairey followed much of the British aircraft industry into the history books. The delta-winged FD2 inspired France’s best-selling Mirage fighter and lived on into the Sixties with research for Concorde, which inherited its flawless appearance and famous droop snoot nose.

For Twiss the speed record marked the apogee of a long flying career, but he seemed to take it all in his stride. “I look upon it as five days out of my life during which we lived the record bid from waking up until going to bed.” He bowed out of flying with very little regret, but kept an association with the high performance motor launch division of Fairey that survived to provide boats for a celebrated chase scene in the 1963 Bond film From Russia With Love.
 
Maybe the sheer pressure of flying early jets knocked any joy out of it, but Twiss finally livened as he recounted playing a baddie pursuing Sean Connery on location off the West Coast of Scotland. Secret agent games were an entertaining substitute for supersonic flight. “That was good fun and we made a profit out of it!”. There was no deep relationship with flying for Twiss and he spent many years out of the cockpit. Stirling Moss became synonymous with high velocity on the road and Donald Campbell was a household name after setting seven world water speed records between 1955 and 1964, but Twiss somehow faded from the limelight.
 
Although he finally took up gliding he regarded the prospect of light propeller aircraft as “a bit of a come down” after the FD2. Pushed on this the hard-headed test pilot explained that flying is not a very practical way to get around the UK. It is a prosaic view, there was no glimmer of poetry and slipping the surly bonds of earth in Twiss’s universe. But then taking on the best the US could muster in a decade of self-doubt demanded discipline.

In conversation Twiss came across as almost bemused to have found himself at the cynosure of technological progress for one brief episode in history. He continued to meet young test pilots. Had the 21st Century created a new, emotionally articulate breed of experimental aviator? “No, they are all after the same thing I was, all living a pilot’s life.”
 
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