British Airways had traditionally been the
flag carrier airline for the United Kingdom. Richard Branson started up Virgin Atlantic after being bumped from an
American Airlines flight., and began competing directly with BA in its lucrative North American market. Virgin would use provocative marketing tactics to undermine BA in public view. Initially BA ignored Virgin, until 1990 when Virgin had used its planes to rescue British citizens during the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and when Virgin started being awarded landing slots at
London Heathrow Airport by
BAA in direct competition with BA. During a meeting at
Gatwick Airport in which BA's chairman
Lord King told his chief executive "do something about Branson", BA asked its helpline team to take on a campaign to undercut three of their British rivals: Virgin,
Dan Air and
Air Europe. The information would be placed in a brown envelope and passed to high-ranking members of BA. When they found out Virgin flights were delayed, BA staff would approach Virgin passengers and try to get them to switch to BA. BA staff also attempted to hack the rival agents' computers once flights had departed from gates. Once BA had the passenger information, they telephoned passengers to try to persuade them to switch their flight to BA by offering upgrades. Sometimes BA staff would call up Virgin's passengers and pretend to be from Virgin. The BA staff would lie that their Virgin flight was cancelled and suggest that they could fly BA instead. Branson became aware of the campaign after a tip-off from a BA insider. In January 1991, Virgin complained to the
European Commission about BA's tactics, which it dubbed "dirty tricks". In response, BA created "Operation Barbara" releasing a dossier detailing alleged negative aspects of Virgin's business. == Court case==