British Airways has announced an array of new initiatives with a £7bn transformation plan at its first ‘In the Skies’ showcase event in London.
“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,” Sean Doyle, British Airways’ Chairman and CEO, said. “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.”
Quite a lot of this was not news, as I’ve previously written about the massive investment in BA’s IT, which is well overdue given the woeful state of its app and website currently. However, there are plenty of announcements that signal improvements for BA and give more detail on what is planned.
In this post:
Ba.com and app
As I’ve previously covered, British Airways has confirmed plans to overhaul its digital user experience with a new website and mobile app offering more personalisation. I’d settle for something that actually worked and an improvement on the awful new “Manage My Booking”, which makes it extremely difficult to find important information such as fare class.
The new ba.com browser is already in BETA testing with an emphasis on being able to manage more things online, such as disruption. This will include being able to book on other carriers where appropriate and receiving hotel and food vouchers.
Initial changes will start to roll out by the end of the year.
WiFi enhancements for customers
From April 3, British Airways Executive Club Members will start to be able to send messages free of charge for the whole flight on a single device using the airline’s WiFi – whatever cabin they’re travelling in. The free messaging pass will allow applications such as WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Teams Chat – without images, videos or attachments, text only.
The service will be available on every WiFi-enabled aircraft within two weeks of the rollout date. This is welcome news and aligns with what most other major carriers are offering. WiFi is available on all of the airline’s Gatwick fleet and more than 80 per cent of British Airways’ Heathrow fleet, rolling out to 100 per cent by the end of 2025.
BA is also offering more solutions for when things go wrong while you are in the air with customer care teams on the ground 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.
Operational improvement
The airline is investing £100m in machine learning, automation and 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 a number of new processes and ways of working, the airline has seen improvement in its on-time departures. I’m not sure when this was introduced but it would be interesting to see how much of an improvement it has delivered so far.
British Airways is also creating around 350 new roles at Heathrow to improve customer experience at its home and hub airport and is investing in new equipment, such as baggage tugs and towing vehicles.
The airline is also investing £750m in its IT infrastructure to move 700 systems and thousands of servers to the cloud by early next year.
Gold Guest List and Group 0
BA has been trialling an extra boarding group for Gold Guest List on certain routes for a while. For me as a GGL who usually sits in row 1 on short haul, this is something I’ve been wanting to hear for a while. No more fighting with what feels like half the plane to get on when they announce groups 1-3 in one go! That’s of course if they actually announce it properly!
Secondly, although not officially announced, according to Flyertalk, Gold Guest List will become a proper tier. This is long overdue as currently if you fail to renew your “soft” landing would technically be to silver which seems unnecessarily harsh on your most loyal customers. There is also a lack of knowledge amongst some BA staff that Gold Guest List even exists, so this may help.
New lounge design concept and Heathrow lounge improvements
The airline is set to open another brand-new lounge, this time in Dubai, which is relocating to a new larger space at Dubai Airport later this year. This is good news as passengers are currently spread across two lounges due to lack of space, with the overflow business one being rather lacklustre. There’s a rather underwhelming Concorde Bar too for first class passengers but nothing specific for Gold card holders.
The new Dubai lounge will be the first to feature British Airways’ new lounge design concept, followed by the opening of its Miami lounge in 2025. This is interesting since not long ago BA announced a new design concept for Rome but then its home lounges are being refurbished in yet another style. It would be good to see something more cohesive across the lounges.
The new Dubai lounge will replace the existing lounge facility at the airport. The airline has also announced lounge refreshes in Lagos and Seattle, and these follow recent lounge refurbishments at Heathrow Terminals 5 and 3, as well as Edinburgh.
As previously announced BA are planning a proper refurbishment of their Heathrow lounges which will take place over 5 years. Hopefully this means we will finally get rid of the NHS hospital style toilets in the lounges! The first lounge to be improved will be the arrivals lounge with more spacious showers although this will reduce the overall number.
In other good news, the Concorde Room cabanas will make a come back after they have been refurbished. These rooms were bookable and had a bathroom with shower and a seating area/day bed. BA never brought them back into service after Covid. They are also looking at a shortened route for Gold Guest List and First class passengers to access the Concorde Room without having to walk through the First Lounge. First to be be refurbished is the T5 Arrivals lounge.
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 in May this year. The good news for those that miss the Club Europe tray tables on the Neos is that they are back with the new design. The re-designed cabins will also be fitted with extra-large bins for overhead luggage. Providing people use them correctly; hopefully, this will reduce the amount of gate checking and make boarding more efficient.
All Club Europe seats will also be fitted with USB-A & USB-C power (60W) backrest-mounted charging ports, while the Euro Traveller seats will be fitted with USB-A & USB-C (15W) backrest-mounted charging ports. It’s good to see the addition of USB-C ports as well.
You can see a video of the seats here.
Investment in First
As previously covered, British Airways is to introduce a brand-new and exclusive First suite. We now know the timeline with BA expecting the new seat to make its debut at the end of 2025 into early 2026 as part of its A380 aircraft refurbishment.
New Routes
I know many readers have been waiting for British Airways flights from London to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur to return. The good news is that services will finally re-start for the first time since the pandemic in October and November, respectively. The bad news is that Bangkok will operate from Gatwick, presumably to save costs as the route was not particularly profitable for BA before.
The airline will operate daily flights between the Malaysian capital city and London Heathrow on a 787-9 aircraft, as well as three flights a week between the Thai capital and London Gatwick on a 777-200ER.
| Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL) from London Heathrow (LHR)
All times are local |
||||||
| Route | Flight number | Departing | Arriving | Date | Days in Operation | Aircraft |
| LHR – KUL | BA33 | 20:45 | 17:30+1 | 10/11/24 | 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 | 787-9 |
| KUL – LHR | BA34 | 23:20 | 05:35+1 | 11/11/24 | 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 | 787-9 |
Return flights from London Heathrow (LHR) to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL) per person start at:
- First £4,000
- Club World £3,200
- World Traveller Plus £1,338
- World Traveller £620
Flights from London Gatwick to Bangkok (LGW-BKK) are scheduled to operate three times per week from October 28 on a 3-cabin aircraft with the following configuration: 32 Club, 48 World Traveller Plus, and 252 World Traveller.
| Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) from London Gatwick (LGW)
All times are local This is a winter only route |
||||||
| Route | Flight number | Departing | Arriving | Date | Days in Operation | Aircraft |
| LGW – BKK | BA2231 | 21:00 | 15:55+1 | 28/10/2024 | 1,4 and 6 | 777-200ER |
| BKK – LGW | BA2230 | 22:55 | 05:30+1 | 29/10/2024 | 2,5 and 7 | 777-200ER |
Return fares from London Gatwick (LGW) to Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) per person start at:
- Club World: £3,257
- World Traveller Plus: £1,297
- World Traveller: £699
As previously announced, British Airways is also returning to Abu Dhabi on April 20, as well as Agadir in Morrocco on March 31 and adding Izmir in Turkey to its network on May 18.
Seats including Avios are on sale now for all the new routes.
Double Tier Points offer extended
British Airways Holidays has today extended its double Tier Points offer (whereby Executive Club Members can earn double Tier Points on flights taken as part of a package holiday of at least 5 nights or longer). This offer is now available for travel until 30 June 2025.
There is more good news as The offer will also be applied in retrospect for any applicable customers who have already booked to travel in the extended period.
Full terms and conditions can be found here.
Sustainability
International Airlines Group (IAG) announced its largest (sustainable aviation fuel) SAF purchase agreement to date with e-SAF (power-to-liquid) producer ‘Twelve’, which will supply advanced e-SAF made from carbon dioxide, water and renewable energy to support IAG’s five European airlines, including British Airways. The next-generation fuel will reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% versus conventional jet fuel. IAG is the first European airline group to announce an e-SAF deal, and the agreement will enable it to continue increasing its SAF use towards the goal of 10% by 2030.
Conclusion
It does finally feel that BA is getting back on track and has listened to customer feedback. The key for me is how quickly these improvements (particularly a functioning website and app) can be made.
14 comments
Umm shame the free wifi is text only…
Yes though most carriers only offer this free for everyone. Be nice if they did something better for business class.
I think the double TP extension is something they HAD to do rather than wanted to do as they knew they were gonna end up in court for ignoring earnings and then downgrading FFs under the new policy.
Website can’t come soon enough. It fails to be a joke as it’s not even funny how useless it is.
Seats look good.
Free messenger. Nice but not before time either.
BKK back on and days B4 this year’s trip so that’s a total result and a good use of the Amex 241.
I’m reading this as I’m sat in the Centurion lounge at T3 after breezing through security without taking a single item out of my bag and thinking that T3 is fast becoming my favourite Heathrow terminal, especially as Virgin are now status matching BA.
I agree that since the new scanners got installed T3 security is very pleasant experience compared with a year ago where I found it hard work with extra searches almost every time.
I really don’t care what upgrades they do.
Windows 98 operating system and lack of investment has done untold damage. Let’s be honest here, if they didn’t have inherited LHR slots they would be in a right mess.
It’s an airline I will never trust again.
“This offer is now available for travel until 30 June 2025.” Is that 2025 or should it be 24? If it’s the former you could fit in a lot of double TP trips in during such a long time. As the saying goes if everyone’s elite then no one is… Already the lounges are packed
Why the hell is a it bad news that bkk will operate out of lgw .shame on the author for belittling lgw it’s London’s second airport and easier to use for those living in the southeast
That’s a bit of an overreaction on your part saying that I’m belittling the airport without any knowledge of why it is inferior for BA long haul. One of the main reasons is that there is little chance that there will be the new BA seats on this route in the next few years. There are no plans to introduce Club Suites to Gatwick currently. Most people dislike the old seats and would much rather have a suite.
Also if you ask the majority of flyers in the South east which airport they would rather fly from they would say Heathrow unless Gatwick is more convenient for location to them. Gatwick does not have the same facilities for Gold cardholders such as the First Wing or the Concorde Room for GGLs. It does however have nice BA lounges. I’d also point out that many public areas in Gatwick have not been refreshed in decades which they admit. Plus the very long walks to some of the gates.
For those of us who are disabled the new website should allow for needs to be recorded rather than have to tell them with each booking what seat is required, ie aisle to the left and specification of mobility scooter and whether walk up steps or need lift.
I didn’t realise it couldn’t do that. I’d agree it should be able to record that sort of information.
The changes are all tinsel and no substance. Typical for BA.
At the end of the day, the first and business offering has been so devalued by withdrawing or downgrading food and drinks that it is now embarrassing. And all this as they announce records profits. Shocking.
The budget will effectively kill off business flights from the UK – so I’m gearing up for business via Paris or Amsterdam to avoid the taxes.
Let’s hope they decide to retrofit the already delivered NEOs with the new seats and cabin. Having a consistent cabin across their shorthaul network will help in the long term – improved passenger experience and quicker / easier boarding process. We’ll have to wait and see what the plan is for Gatwick, as Euroflyer are operating CEOs for the foreseeable future.
It would be great if BA got on the front foot regarding cabin baggage. They know which flights will be operating with a NEO with the new cabin (although there could be a last minute aircraft change), so take steps in the email sequence and app to educate people how to load cases into the new bins. The app could contain a mandatory must-watch video and notification prior to boarding reminding passengers.
We all hate the faff & kerfuffle involved with excessive amounts of cabin luggage. The more passengers that get it right in storing their cases, the more valuable minutes saved in getting the aircraft ready for an on-time departure.
You missed the critical word…
BW announces “investment” AGAIN…
Yet no real world improvements.
Believe it when it’s neen reliably delivered for 6months until then it’s just another round of NA BS
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