It’s been 30 years since British Airways was privatised, but the airline still enjoys a certain pride of place in Britain, thanks to its status as the nation’s flagship carrier. With issues around national pride uppermost in the public psyche as Brexit looms, the recent chaos at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports, with snaking queues of frustrated passengers and mountains of luggage, has hit the airline particularly hard. “It’s time to strip the word British from BA,” exclaimed Daily Mail columnist Robert Hardman. “Why should Britain have its name sullied by this corporate clown act any longer?”
After days of chaos, due to an IT failure that left thousands stranded and which BA attributed to a power surge, things are slowly returning to normal. Flights are back on course and the airline is gradually returning baggage stranded overseas. But BA will all likely count the cost of the situation for a long time to come. While analysts have begun to put the cost of compensating passengers, not to mention the lost business as a result of the chaos, the bigger question will be how it impacts the brand in the long term.
The reality of BA, despite its branding, is that it’s been out of “British” hands for a while now, falling within Madrid-based International Airlines Group. It’s also been subject to a tough market — on one hand, it has to compete with the Asian carriers, which are able to offer lower-cost travel but high standards of service on long-haul flights, while on the other, it feels pressure from Europe’s low-cost, no-frills carriers such as Easyjet, Ryanair and Norwegian.
The company has had little choice but to cut costs — and this has become an easy point of focus, following the IT meltdown. As the crisis unfolded, the GMB union, which represents many BA workers in Britain, was swift to point the finger at the airline’s outsourcing strategy for its IT systems. The union had sent letters to the British Prime Minister on three separate occasions, raising questions about the decision to outsource IT jobs to offshore locations such as India. It’s a view the union has firmly stuck to despite BA’s insistence that neither cost-cutting nor outsourcing played a role in the IT meltdown. However, with the company providing scant details, it’s an issue BA has struggled to shake off.
Long-term damage
The question will be the long-term damage wrought. John Strickland, an air industry expert, notes this is not the first time BA had to struggle with potential reputational damage. He pointed to the severe teething problems on the opening day of Terminal 5 Heathrow in March 2008, when flights were cancelled amid a failure of its baggage-handling system. While the current crisis may be in another league of severity, it’s one he believes the company can recover from, provided it is willing to devote the necessary resources.
The bigger question, he points out, is one for the wider industry and even beyond. The BA debacle follows on the heels of the cyber attack that crippled NHS hospitals. While the situations may be different, they highlight the risks posed, as more and more services are shifted away from the frontline. “The irony is that we are in this online age, with apps to check in and check out of terminals. When we have any questions, airlines will refer us to their websites. We are hardly encountering people at all airports,” said Mr. Strickland. “What will inevitably have to be part of the review is how they communicate given the limited number of staff in airports, and in such an IT-based world. It’s a question for the wider industry too. When all systems used to communicate are down, where do people go?”
