What British Airways news did we get from IAG’s Capital Markets Day?

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• Chris W says:

  30 Nov30 November 09:07

  I doubt they will ever refurbish the Gatwick fleet. Presumably they will start shifting older (but refurbished) LHR long-haul aircraft to LGW as they continue receiving new deliveries to be based at LHR so LGW will see Club Suites that way within, what, 5 years?

  • jjoohhnn says:

    30 Nov30 November 12:22

    Well they do need to start retiring the 777s that were built in the 1990’s pretty soon, and there are 24 of those, the eldest being 26.5 yrs old, although a lot of these have club-suite.

  • Rhys says:

    30 Nov30 November 12:23

    That’s my theory, too.

• 2ilent8cho says:

  30 Nov30 November 09:35

  ‘Enhanced food and beverage offering in the BA lounges’ (slide 55) – not sure how that fits with removing the QR-code food ordering and putting the same food in Galleries First and Club …..

  Removal of that horrid QR food ordering system is very much an enhancement, I hated it. Was slow to get food, when you change seats (like when window view ones become free) you have to keep an eye out because the food won’t know to go to your new seat, half the food gets left because you cannot pick what you want, ie you got 3 sandwiches but I don’t like all 3 given. It was a joke of a service.

  • daveinitalia says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:55

    There was an overlap period where you had both the buffet and the at seat ordering. This seemed the best of both worlds.

    Prior to COVID the situation was better. You had the buffet but also there was a menu you could order from (not online, it was paper and you placed the order with one of the Baxter Storey staff). This included items which are now only available in the Concorde Room such as the burger. This was a key differentiation between Club (which didn’t have this menu) and first.

  • memesweeper says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:57

    For passengers in a hurry, and children, a buffet is always a winner.

    For everyone else, table service is preferred.

    The best lounges have both.

    • Simon says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:17

      I don’t have children and I’m never in a rush. Yet I much prefer the buffet. Going back and forth and piling the food up high is one of my life’s guilty pleasures.

      • His Holyness says:

        30 Nov30 November 14:43

        But the food on the buffet is awful. It’s a carb and slop fest followed by a plate of bourbons.
        A decade ago Galleries wiped the floor with similar European lounges, now it’s rock bottom.

    • CamFlyer says:

      30 Nov30 November 14:53

      If I have enough time in the lounge that I can order table service, I arrived at the airport too early. If on business, any extra time beyond what is required for sustenance goes to catching up on work while i have a data / phone connection and enjoying something to drink (coffee, or something stronger, depending on time of day and how relaxed). If not on business, I’m with family (in which case, see memesweeper’s post).

• Jill Kinkell says:

  30 Nov30 November 10:09

  Well, What a lot of aspirational guff. I’d like to believe it will all happen, and soon, and we’d all be delighted to experience ‘world class’ and ‘enhanced’ this , that and t’other, along with mega shareholder returns. BA have been spouting forth about all of this for years and we’ve been telling them so much needs sorting, and every year the aspirational guff appears on slides. Of course, the get out clause is in the Disclaimer at the end which accounts for why we are still moaning.!
  Oh well, the dream lives on…..

  • JDB says:

    30 Nov30 November 10:21

    To be fair, this is the first capital markets day since Covid and the group is inevitably still very scarred from that, so you can’t expect everything at once. Club Suite is already big progress and they are slowly working on the soft stuff around that.

    The shortage of staff and aircraft will gradually be resolved and we will have to hope it doesn’t coincide with a travel market downturn as it often does.

    • Richie says:

      30 Nov30 November 10:45

      Boeing has massive orders for its Dreamliners. Airbus has big orders for A321s and the A220 seems to be popular. BA may be at risk of being left behind.

      • can2 says:

        30 Nov30 November 11:26

        I think it already is behind as it takes years even to fullfill –let alone negotiating prices– those orders.

        • jjoohhnn says:

          30 Nov30 November 12:40

          BA recently exercised 6 options on 787-10, due in 2025-26. There are 5 due next year also, so there is fleet growth in the near-term. There are 18 777-9’s on order too, which should hopefully come quite quickly once certified as they may all be built already! They are waiting for 9 neo’s. BA tend to do smaller orders, replacing planes in stages, rather than the likes of Air India or Turkish where they go for an entire fleet replacement, but then BA are a smaller airline.

• SteveCroydon says:

  30 Nov30 November 10:38

  Any mention of the appalling cr@p IT systems and the daily/hourly changes to ba.com which continually fail?? I bet not.

  • A350 says:

    30 Nov30 November 10:58

    Actually the IT investment within BA was one of the biggest takeaways from this presentation.

    • can2 says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:28

      A realistic plan to “implement” those IT upgrades would be more interesting — it may take months to train staff, move the system and data, fix the immediate issues, wait till the users get used to it… There are so many steps

  • can2 says:

    30 Nov30 November 11:27

    I keep realising that the “brilliant” IT issue is IAG-wide. Just booked a vueling flight, faced gazillions of issues and couldn’t even create a Vueling account. Just odd.

    • PH says:

      30 Nov30 November 22:17

      Vueling and AerLingus are on the same Avios platform, and I recently couldn’t make an AerLingus account – eventually I figured out the reason was that I once had an Avios.com account with the email I was trying to use to sign up for AerLingus – so that may be your issue too. It’s like they took some of the legacy infrastructure from Avios.com and turned it into the AerLingus and Vueling Avios platform ?

• can2 says:

  30 Nov30 November 11:37

  I am glad to announce that I went thru the whole presentation — lazy day at work!

  I am completelly flabbergasted how they underestimate their investment for the middle east and indian subcontinent.. completely left to QR

  • Rhys says:

    30 Nov30 November 12:27

    QR owns 25% of IAG, so that’s a feature, not a bug.

    But does BA really want to start competing against the upcoming behemoths? In addition to Emirates, Qatar and Etihad you’ll soon have a bigger-than-ever India Air, Riyadh Air has its sights set on world domination…

    • flyforfun says:

      30 Nov30 November 13:28

      “you’ll soon have a bigger-than-ever India Air, Riyadh Air”

      Oh! Any links on plans? I always wondered when they would realise India could be a better mid point the the far east or middle east countries on flights to Australia. You might be able to break flights roughly in the middle, say 2 x 10 hour legs as opposed to the 12 to 14 and 6 to 9 hour legs. I know QF is planning non-stop, but I don’t fancy sitting on a plane for 20 hours in Y or PE! If I decide to splurge on J, then that’s different.

    • Stu_N says:

      30 Nov30 November 13:58

      The slides on yield per market were interesting too. With BA’s capacity constraints of a slot-constrained hub and sub-optimal fleet capacity it’s logical to follow the most profitable routes and the money is transatlantic.

      The ME3 + Turkish have Europe to Asia pretty much sewn up, there’s half a dozen UK regional airports with two or more options, and more with one of the carriers doing UK-Hub-Asia. How can you realistically compete with that, other than focusing on premium non-stop routes like Singapore?

      • Talay says:

        30 Nov30 November 15:33

        Agreed. There is no economic model I can see which brings back LHR-BKK or LHR-HKT or even LHR-KUL.

        My Amex 241s have all been lost, save the latest and the near one (holding on £9500 spend).

        I was mightily miffed I missed the LHR-SIN news yesterday and this morning as I would have taken a first on that route or booked a couple actually !

    • Jenny Reed says:

      30 Nov30 November 15:40

      Well it does gave one big advantage over the Middle Eastern airlines for me, and that is direct flights. Quicker without the stopover, no risk of missing your connection and reduced risk of losing luggage. I do a lot of long haul business travel and not being able to fly direct on BA to much of Asia and Latin America is a right pain.

• Myriad says:

  30 Nov30 November 14:46

  “Modernisation of the IT estate”

  Very excited to see what IAG does with new technology from 2005

  • ADS says:

    30 Nov30 November 16:03

    a new chair for the IT director?

    • can2 says:

      30 Nov30 November 17:31

      don’t be irresponsible! just a cushion

  • Andrew W. says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:54

    Well Avios call centre staff moved recently from needing wired telephone lines to voice over IP! Revolutionary

• Bernard says:

  30 Nov30 November 15:07

  Unless anyone was actually present, this whole topic is just guessing and armchair ceo talk. At events like these surely the interesting stuff is what gets discussed in the coffee breaks – away from making of ‘what’s suits me matters most’ comments on here.
  No company will put anything other than general things on a slide show its competitors will look at too.

  The absence of any dividends actually says the reverse of what Rob claims: the balance sheet is still precarious enough that they can’t pay out any, even after the BA pension cash payments have ended.

  • Stu_N says:

    30 Nov30 November 15:17

    The Q&A are also usually the most interesting bit – shame they aren’t transcribed.

    Balance sheet doesn’t look that precarious but with still high levels of debt and significant investment plans, management will think it prudent not to restart the dividend too soon. One line of argument is that you only pay dividends if you think your investors can do better with that cash than you can.

  • Rob says:

    30 Nov30 November 15:18

    Er, no. Board members cannot make any material private statements to investors in private which are not made available to all other shareholders.

    • Bernard says:

      30 Nov30 November 17:54

      But they can discuss broader non material issues and non trading items in more depth.

      That’s what a copy/paste of the presentation with nothing from the questions or other discussions has lost.

      • JDB says:

        30 Nov30 November 20:22

        The Q&A is available online. The complaints about just how important it is appears to miss the difference between a capital markets day and results presentations and just complaints for the sake of it. If there had been a genuine interest, the information has been available for over a week.

        • Mikeact says:

          30 Nov30 November 20:43

          Re Q@A. It seems that HfP didn’t know that….

      • JDB says:

        30 Nov30 November 20:30

        @Bernard – I think that you may not be very au fait with with modern corporate practice. You are talking the 1980s. Board directors these days are acutely aware of their legal duties and the penalties for even quite apparently minor transgressions are very severe. Internal and external lawyers, compliance and advisors are also very aware, involved in these events, and warning directors to be aware of going off message.

        A very public event like this is the last place you will get the ‘colour’ you seek and you will find that there weren’t any ‘in depth’ offline discussions.

• Colin MacKinnon says:

  30 Nov30 November 21:17

  Big issue for me – tiny for BA! – is the lack of flights from Scotland to LHR and LGW.

  I can face waits in London, of similar lengths to the transatlantic flight, just to get a flight to EDI or GLA!

  So I might as well go to mainland Europe and have a night out. And I notice those cheap flights are returning. We are entering a recession.

  • Bob Caddis says:

    2 Dec2 December 08:09

    BA are totally SE centric. If they want more passengers from the North then they need to provide feeder services into their hubs from more airports. KLM seem to be the experts at serving the UK’s regional airports, BA need to learn a lesson from them. 4 flights from Leeds to Amsterdam each day and yet BA operate none- seems ridiculous.

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