BA unveils £7bn plan to win back customers’ trust
BA yesterday revealed a £7billion masterplan to try to regain its self - proclaimed status as the ‘world’s favourite airline’.
As part of the strategy , passengers will be able to send WhatsApp and other messages free on all flights from April 3.
A survey last month by con - sumer champion Which? placed BA in the bottom five for shorthaul flights – below Jet2.com and easyJet – and in the bottom three for long haul.
But Sean Doyle, BA ’s chairman and chief executive, said he planned to revolutionise the business in two years.
‘We are embarking on the most significant transforma - tion of the airline in our entire history,’ he declared.
The £7billion modernisation programme is called 600+, which is a reference to the number of improvement areas. It includes £1billion for IT systems in the hope of avoiding the computer meltdowns that have plagued the company in the past.
A website and mobile app will be launched, making it easier for customers to change their bookings rather than trying one of the airline’s call centres. This will start to be introduced by the end of the year.
new short-haul seats and cabin interiors will be intro - duced on the next generation of Airbus A320s and A321s, with eight aircraft set to arrive from May this year.
new leather seats will be blue with red trims and fancy stitching. These planes will also be fitted with extra large overhead bins for luggage – but there will be no extra leg room.
When dozens of BA flights were cancelled in March 2022, Mr Doyle said: ‘Many of our customers are rightly fed up. . . and I’m as frustrated as you are with some of the things we’ve had to deal with.’
Announcing the latest plans, the chief executive said he was determined to ‘fix the basics’ and that the airline had ‘made great progress on punctuality in the last three months’.
Flights from London to Abu Dhabi, Bangkok and K uala Lumpur are set to return in April, october and november respectively. And new routes to Agadir in Morocco and Izmir in T urkey will be launched later this month and in May respectively.
To benefit from free on-board text messaging , passengers must sign up as a British Air - ways Executive Club member.
They can then send messages via platforms such as Whats - App, iMessage, F acebook Messenger and T eams Chat – without images, videos or attachments. The service will be available to all passengers.
‘Plagued by meltdowns’