Rod Eddington is Chief Executive of British Airways, the UK's premier airline and one of the largest in the world.

Eddington was born in Perth, WA in 1950. He was educated both in Australia and Oxford University, England (Eddington was the 1974 Rhodes Scholar from Western Australia).

Early career

Eddington joined the Swire Group in 1979, working for its subsidiary Cathay Pacific, before being appointed Managing Director in 1992. Continuing his association with the airline industry; News Limited, subsidiary of News Corporation, appointed Eddington Chairman of Ansett Australia in January 1997. News Corp took control of the airline with TNT in 1979. Eddington was appointed Deputy Chairman of News Limited in September 1998. He was further promoted to the News Corporation board in September 1999.

British Airways

Eddington replaced former BA CEO Bob Ayling on May 2 2000. Early tests of his leadership were the abandonment of Ayling's corporate relaunch in early 2001, the Ethnic art tailfins, and the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C. which proved disastrous for many airlines.

Following a loss of £200m in 2002 Eddington's "Future Size and Shape" cost cutting programme allowed BA to report a profit of £135m in 2003, despite a decrease in turnover. Eddington declared: "These are good results in one of the toughest years in living memory", and while this can be expected from a CEO trying to reassure investors it was against a climate of the Iraq War and SARS.

BA's relatively steady performance in difficult times has not been without incident, the carrier has recently suffered embarrassing delays at its Heathrow hub which it blamed on staffing shortages, bad weather and technical difficulties.