British Airways will make a multimillion-pound investment in staff training at its London Heathrow Airport hub, 10 months after a light snowfall there brought chaos to its services. The breakdown led to the stranding of thousands of passengers, with some complaining of a lack of assistance from BA staff, just a few days after CEO Alex Cruz the difference between BA and LCCs was that the national carrier’s staff would “bust a gut” to fix passengers’ problems when things go wrong. The new training initiative will start with the airline’s customer service hosts at its flagship home, Heathrow’s Terminal 5. “British Airways’ hosts have traditionally helped customers with one aspect of their journey,” the airline said. “As part of a new approach, between now and next summer a huge training operation will get underway to enable every host to help customers across a range of different areas—from ticketing to rebooking, changing reservations, finding delayed luggage or providing up-to-date flight information. Hosts will use iPads loaded with a number of specialist apps and will walk the terminal floor, reaching out to customers, rather than waiting for them to visit desks.”<br/>
oneworld
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 737-800 was forced to abort takeoff at Shanghai Pudong Airport after two tires burst as the aircraft was accelerating from runway 35R around 1:30 a.m. local time Oct. 21. The flight, MH387, had been bound for Kuala Lumpur. The aircraft, 9M-MXM, was able to decelerate and vacate the runway. Emergency services were activated, and the gear was doused with foam as a precautionary measure. The runway was temporary closed following the incident. Subsequent inspections of the five-year-old aircraft revealed that tire fragments had punctured the fuselage in a few areas. “An investigation is ongoing. Safety remains of utmost importance to Malaysia Airlines, and will ensure that the aircraft is airworthy before being deployed for service,” the carrier said.<br/>
Qatar Airways Group CEO Akbar Al Baker said Oct. 18 in New York that its oneworld membership is in question and the Doha-based carrier could leave the alliance in 2019. Even though he stressed the importance of the airline’s position in oneworld—describing it as one of the most important tools for collective action in serving customer needs—he suggested some alliance members, especially the US Big Three carriers—American Airlines, Delta and United—were not on good terms with the Middle Eastern carrier. “In June 2013, we joined the oneworld [alliance]. We were invited by American Airlines and [UK-based] British Airways together. Unfortunately, the same airline that invited us is now talking against Qatar Airways,” Al Baker said. Al Baker added there are a lot of bad feelings with the three US airlines, despite Qatar’s agreement not to exercise fifth freedom flights into the US. Al Baker said that while one of the principal purposes of an alliance is for members to feed passengers to each other, Qatar is now getting more passengers from non-oneworld airlines.<br/>