British Airways – a member of International Airlines Group (a Corporate Partner of the FTE Digital, Innovation & Startup Hub and a Partner of the FTE Baggage Innovation Working Group) – has launched a £7 billion transformation plan.
“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 Sean Doyle, Chairman and CEO, British Airways. “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.”
As part of its investment programme, 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 browser is already in BETA testing with platforms designed to offer a range of new services, including empowering customers to self-serve if they wish, taking control of and making changes to their journeys online, rather than having to call one of the airline’s customer care centres to alter their plans. Initial changes will start to roll out by the end of the year.
British Airways is also enhancing inflight connectivity. From 3 April 2024, British Airways Executive Club Members will start to be able to send messages free of charge on a single device using the airline’s WiFi – whatever cabin they’re travelling in.
The airline has also become the first to offer a WiFi-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 colleagues across more than 300 flights a day.
As Future Travel Experience reported in this exclusive article, International Airlines Group is trialling Robotics & Automation, AI, and much more across the ramp, lounges and accessibility. British Airways has announced it is investing £100 million in Machine Learning, automation and Artificial Intelligence across its operation, aiming to drive 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 a number of new processes and ways of working, the airline has seen improvement to its on-time departures.
Meanwhile, 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 this year.
