BA boss pledges to rebuild its reputation for premium service

British Airways boss Sean Doyle pledged on Friday to rebuild relations with customers and staff and restore the airline’s reputation for premium service as the industry recovers from the pandemic. Doyle, who spent the first 15 months in charge in near-permanent crisis management, unveiled his strategy to emerge from the pandemic and aviation’s worst crisis in an address to 30,000 staff via video link. One of his priorities will be to restore the airline’s brand as a premium offering, which will give passengers a better service than its “no-frills” rivals such as Ryanair and easyJet, while keeping costs down. “There is room for optimism that we are on the way out” of the pandemic, and that the airline needed to “redefine” its place in the airline world, including a heavy emphasis on service and the passenger experience.b“Putting the premium proposition into the heart of what we do is going to be key,” he told the Financial Times at BA’s headquarters near Heathrow. “We want people to come off a British Airways flight and talk about it as if it’s something different.” The strategy represents the Irish executive’s first move to stamp his mark on BA and indicates he will not focus on wholesale changes. Instead, he will prioritise rebuilding the airline’s brand as a premium service in an effort to make it once again the main driver of profits for its Spanish parent International Airlines Group, IAG. But it is a challenge successive BA bosses struggled to meet because of conflicting pressures of trying to compete with low-cost carriers in economy class, while maintaining standards for business and first class passengers. The challenge is arguably greater for Doyle than his predecessors as BA emerges from a pandemic that culminated in lay-offs criticised as “a national disgrace” by MPs. It was in effect the final act of a chaotic period that included IT failures, a data breach and its first pilots’ strike.<br/>