Free fallin’

© British Airways/Stuart Bailey

I have been accused, light heartedly, I think, of pandering on these pages with my rants about air travel and, in particular, British Airways. It has been suggested that by having a moan I increase the chances of a cheeky upgrade next time I step aboard a plane belonging to what used to be known as “the world’s favourite airline”. Except that it no longer is, by a significant long chalk, and the odds of getting anything gratis out of BA under its current penny-pinching regime are next to nothing.

I write this while waiting to fly back to London from Munich with Lufthansa. I should have been flying with BA, but then they sent me an e-mail to say that my flight had been cancelled, due to the impending pilot’s strike, and that I needed to rebook with someone else. Which I did. And then, 24 hours later, I received another e-mail from British Airways saying that, actually, my flight to Munich was going to fly, after all. Except it wouldn’t have. As I arrived yesterday morning, Heathrow was a car park of BA planes. As far as the eye could see from the perimeter road there was tailfin after tailfin emblazoned with the airline’s red, white and blue motif. None of them were moving. The disruption caused by the 48-hour walkout will go on for days. In total, 1700 flights were cancelled, affecting 195,000 passengers and leaving 150 of BA's 278 planes - and 700 pilots and 4,000 cabin crew - in the wrong place, with other factors like mandatory rest hours likely to prolong the chaos. The whole affair has cost BA at least £100 million in lost revenue, which was probably the point.

Alex Cruz
© British Airways

At the heart of the dispute by BALPA, the pilots’ union, is a claim for better pay from an airline that last year made almost £2 billion in profit, the result of CEO Alex Cruz’s ruthless application of a profit-first philosophy which removed free snacks on economy class flights in a hope to compete with the likes of easyJet and Ryanair (and in the process, downgrade BA's brand value even further). Mr. Cruz, by the way, earns £1.3 million a year from his job. Now, pilots - as opposed to those who clean the planes between flights and load baggage - earn well. Pilot salaries start at £90,000 and rise to almost £170,000 for senior captains, but the union argues that pilot salaries were frozen at a time when BA was in financial recovery. On top of that, they get to book personal travel for themselves and their families for a fraction of what the travelling public has to pay. Not bad conditions. But when you see your employer not only return to profitability but make record profits on the back of a business model designed to profit even more, it is, perhaps, understandable to want a slice of the action. The upshot, however, is a two-day strike that has ruined honeymoons and wedding anniversary trips, and, crucially, disrupted business travel. Environmentalists will argue that we shouldn’t be flying at all, but this is not the point. People still need to go places, and the strike has made that significantly more challenging for those who already had plans in place.

BA's daily losses throughout the strike and its costs during the knock-on days is money it could probably do with to fix the systemic issues that have seen it plummet to 55th out of 65 airlines in global satisfaction rankings. That is entirely of its own doing and the net result of a litany of offences that have conspired to erode customer loyalty, from £4 Marks & Spencer sandwiches on short-haul flights to squeezing in more rows so that legroom (even in business class) is shorter than in many rivals' cabins; then there’s the atrocious rate of return for Executive Club members trying to build privilege tiers and Avios points - and, therefore, loyalty - and being pitifully rewarded on both counts; and, finally, simple breakdowns in operations, such as the disastrous data breach that cost it £183 million in a record fine, the two major IT outages in as many years, and the most recent debacle involving rogue cancellation e-mails. I’ll even add one more: the airline has just relaunched its iPad app, rendering it now with “limited functionality”, according to one official Twitter reply to a complaint from someone who’d launched it only to find that it now only allows users to book a new flight. No longer can it give you details of your bookings, what you’ve earned air miles for, or other useful information about your BA experience. Nothing.

These might sound like the gripes of an over-privileged individual with club class tastes and club class expectations. But as someone who has to travel a lot for work - mostly economy class, I might add - it’s been frustrating to the point of genuine sadness to see an air carrier like BA, that used to stand for something that felt that you were being treated like a valued customer and not a commodity from which to plunder for profit, go down this path of eroding customer quality. Fault lies squarely with BA’s management and that of its parent company, IAG. Their fanatical profit obsession has reduced the airline to one you'd only choose if there were no better alternatives. I will still have to fly with them on some of my regular routes, but when you look at what your loyalty is rewarded by (and access to a business lounge being about the only thing these days), I could go elsewhere and get a sense of better service all round. Flying Virgin across the Atlantic is still the more enjoyable, up to date experience it was almost 30 years ago when I made my first trip to America; the Middle Eastern carriers have long established themselves as the preferred choice for many destinations in Asia and the southern hemisphere. Even upstarts, like Norwegian, have found a business model that balances economy travel with a product you feel delivers value for money.

The recent report by reputation management specialists Alva which revealed that BA’s ranking had sunk to 55th made specific reference to passenger perception that the airline is all about cost cutting for profit. It has tried to respond by claiming investment in new aircraft like the Airbus A350 to replace shockingly ancient Boeing 747-400s and 777-200s, along with improvements to in-flight catering and, very slowly, the rollout of inflight WiFi (a technology I first experienced on an American Airlines flight 10 years ago). But these are all cosmetics - expensive, yes, but still cosmetic - when the core of the customer experience is still being eroded by simple, stupid mistakes like sending out erroneous e-mails, or allowing IT systems to collapse, stranding and severely inconveniencing hundreds of passengers.

Reputation matters, as people in my own profession are prone to incant, and when a once great airline like BA suffers such repeated fundamental failures, you’d expect Mr. Cruz and his boss, Willie Walsh, to pull their fingers out and do something about it. Worse, when people are driven to tweeting “I want my British Airways back”, it’s clear that there’s an awful lot to fix. They’d better get on with it. Fast.