British Airways has announced initiatives to transform the airline, unveiling a £7bn transformation plan at its first In the Skies showcase event in London.
Chairman and CEO Sean Doyle outlined the modernisation plan, committing to delivering a world-class passenger experience, modernising IT, boosting pride among staff, focusing on sustainability and driving on-time performance.
“We’re on a journey to a better BA for our people and for our customers, underpinned by a transformation programme that will see us invest £7bn over the next two years to revolutionise our business,” said Doyle.
“We’re going to take delivery of new aircraft, introduce new cabins, elevate our customer care, focus on operational performance and address our environmental impact by reducing our emissions and creating a culture of sustainability. We’re also heavily investing in the development of a new ba.com website and app and are laser-focused on transforming our business and fixing any pain points for our customers,” he continued.
British Airways has confirmed plans to overhaul its digital user experience with a new website and mobile app offering deeper personalisation. The new ba.com website is in testing with platforms designed to offer a range of new services, including empowering passengers to self-serve if they wish. This is aimed at enabling passengers to take control and make changes to their journeys online, rather than having to call one of the airline’s customer care centres to alter plans. Initial changes will start to roll out by the end of 2024.
Wi-Fi enhancements for passengers
From April 3, British Airways Executive Club members will start to be able to send messages free of charge on a single device using the airline’s Wi-Fi – whatever cabin they’re travelling in. The service will be available on every Wi-Fi-enabled aircraft within two weeks of the rollout date.
The airline has become the first to offer a Wi-Fi-enabled inflight customer care solution to solve issues in the moment – even at 35,000ft. Created especially for British Airways by Microsoft, customer care teams on the ground are now able to connect with cabin crew across more than 300 flights a day. The functionality allows the crew to help solve any unexpected issues before a flight lands at one of the airline’s destinations.
Wi-Fi is available on all of the airline’s Gatwick fleet and more than 80 per cent of the Heathrow fleet, rolling out to 100 per cent by the end of 2025.
Free messaging will be available on all of BA’s connected aircraft for the full duration of the flight on a single device. Executive Club Members will access by logging into their account. Non-members can sign up onboard or before travelling to use the free messaging service.
Increased automation and AI
The airline is investing £100m in machine learning, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) across its operation, driving improvements from bookings to baggage handling and helping to revolutionise its operation, speed up departures and respond to disruption.
Innovative new tools are helping to predict delays (prompting pre-emptive action to reduce disruption) and analyse real-time weather, aircraft capacity and customer connections data to help teams make better decisions. Since the introduction of the systems, alongside new processes and ways of working, the airline has seen an improvement to on-time departures.
The airline is also investing £750m in its IT infrastructure to move 700 systems and thousands of servers to the cloud by early 2025.
New cabins and seats
New short-haul seats and cabin interiors will feature on the next generation of British Airways’ Airbus A320neo and A321neos, with eight aircraft set to arrive from May 2024. The new short-haul Euro Traveller and Club Europe seats reflect a modern yet classic British interior. The re-designed cabins will also be fitted with extra-large bins for overhead luggage.
Club Europe seats will see the return of the bespoke leather tray that sits between the aisle and window seat. All Club Europe seats will also be fitted with USB-A and USB-C power (60W) backrest-mounted charging ports. Euro Traveller seats will be fitted with USB-A and USB-C (15W) backrest-mounted charging ports.
As the only European carrier to offer First Class between the UK and US, British Airways is to introduce a brand-new and exclusive First suite. The airline expects the new seat to make its debut at the end of 2025 into early 2026 as part of its A380 aircraft refurbishment.
