BA explores sale of headquarters in shift to homeworking

British Airways is exploring the sale of its headquarters as part of a plan to allow its head office staff to split their time permanently between home and office working after the pandemic. The airline has hired property consultants to evaluate a sale of the sprawling Waterside complex on the outskirts of Heathrow airport in west London, which houses 2,000 staff, according to an internal email seen by the Financial Times. “Many of us are based at Waterside and it’s not clear if such a large office will play a part in our future,” BA’s director of people, Stuart Kennedy, wrote in the message to staff. He added it is still “very early days” and a sale was just one option on the table. BA paid £200m for the land and construction of Waterside in the 1990s, but “one of the very few positive aspects” of the pandemic had been how well staff had adapted to working remotely, Kennedy said. The airline has undergone a painful restructuring since the pandemic first grounded its aircraft, and cut about 10,000 staff last year to leave it with a workforce of 30,000. Most of these work on the ground as flight and cabin crew, engineers and airport staff.<br/>