Times: BA to improve 600 problem areas in £7bn overhaul

[PB2]

Anyone have a link to the full article?

[Amy C]

The article has been removed from the website.

[SJ]

Still showing on Apple News

https://apple.news/AMODdRlgAQ8ms71NN5rzO5w

[masaccio]

It wasn’t up long enough to get archived either it seems. There is nothing overly insightful in the Apple News copy. One of the examples is enabling crew in the air to Teams chat with the ground to rebook passengers who will miss connections.

Other than that same old same old about rebirth.

[StanTheMan]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-airways-600-areas-for-improvement-ba-bosses-729dqvxjk

[masaccio]

And an archived version for people with neither Apple News nor Times subscriptions – https://archive.is/4Uq6E

[Ant M]

masaccio wrote:

And an archived version for people with neither Apple News nor Times subscriptions – https://archive.is/4Uq6E

Thanks. The focus on sorting the IT is long overdue.

[PB2]

Thank you.

[eppleby]

Perhaps the first improvement would be teaching staff the words ‘yes, we can!’ rather than plain ‘no!’

[sturgeon]

It also said something about bringing the service level up to the Middle Eastern airlines, also refurbishing the T5 lounges.

[Lady London]

£7 billion? Did they leave a ‘0’ off that?

[The Savage Squirrel]

Poor BA. Even Jay-Z only had 99 problems…

[Rob]

This article is 100% based on the speech that Sean Doyle gave at the BA media party on Monday night.

[Skywalker]

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

Poor BA. Even Jay-Z only had 99 problems…

Yes, but you cannot infer from the song title that BA’s IT wasn’t one of them.

[MF176]

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

Poor BA. Even Jay-Z only had 99 problems…

and the Beef Cheeks ain’t one.

[davestat]

There is a double page in Saturday’s Daily Mail listing all the areas to be improved. Still a few missing from the list though.

[Ihar]

I don’t agree with the staffing, or the workload, but actually I really love BA staff. I am nice to them. They are nice to me.

There’s the problem. Maybe we just need better passengers….

[JonathanC]

Does anyone reckon that we might see a near brand new BA website ?

Their current online presence is poor, not being able to book things like open-jaw tickets online, countless bugs and errors all over the place…
BA would be probably be surprised at the amount of call centre staff they won’t need when they finally get a decent website up and running, as many need to call their bookings helplines to get everything sorted.

Although the iOS app is okay, something that still baffles me is when searching for reward flights, why it asks for Face ID login, then after you’ve cleared that hurdle it asks you to manually log into your account again using your password and BAEC number or email… it happens every time !!

[Skywalker]

JonathanC wrote:

Does anyone reckon that we might see a near brand new BA website ?

Their current online presence is poor, not being able to book things like open-jaw tickets online

Just wondering – could you use the customise trip on the BA website to achieve this?

[TooPoorToBeHere]

JonathanC wrote:

Although the iOS app is okay, something that still baffles me is when searching for reward flights, why it asks for Face ID login, then after you’ve cleared that hurdle it asks you to manually log into your account again using your password and BAEC number or email… it happens every time !!

It takes attention to detail on both front and back ends (ie the app and the website/API behind it) to avoid unnecessarily throwing away or invalidating the authentication token.

Unfortunately app developers who spend all day logging in to apps in dev forget that to a user (especially one suffering from some or all of being elderly, visually impaired, in an area of poor signal strength, with a low phone battery, suffering irrops, late for a flight) that unnecessary login prompt might be quite stressful. Most of all they forget that their app is not the centre of the user’s life but rather one of several dozen the user occasionally uses and does not know the password for (or, worse: user has been driven to use the same password everywhere).

Successful apps whose lifeblood is monthly subscription revenue (Spotify, Netflix…) do not do this. It can be achieved, it just requires the IT people to not be useless tossers. Spotify asked me to login once: when I bought a new phone. Never again.

[memesweeper]

TooPoorToBeHere wrote:

Successful apps whose lifeblood is monthly subscription revenue (Spotify, Netflix…) do not do this. It can be achieved, it just requires the IT people to not be useless tossers. Spotify asked me to login once: when I bought a new phone. Never again.

It’s not just useless devs. Executive sponsors who demand features and push deadlines and set budgets often don’t consider user experience (or critical non-functional requirements like data security). Sadly plenty of agencies and internal IT departments cheerfully deliver garbage because, essentially, that was what they were asked to do. They delivered what was prioritised.

When you specify a building to an architect or building contractor you don’t need to say “and I don’t want the roof to collapse next year when it snows”. IT is an immature industry and, essentially, you *do* need to do this. So either get a good partner who will make you spend the time and money on user experience/research (and other things you don’t realise you need to ask for); or develop an internal IT team with a culture of excellence that will do the same.

Neither option will be “cheap”. BA is now spending lots of money, but did they grasp why what they’ve got didn’t work out in the first place? the question is not only “how do we fix this?” but “why was this delivered already broken?”.

I suspect the 600 item to-do list does not address the lack of appropriate digital skills at executive and board level. I’d love to be proven wrong.