British Airways under pressure to improve as cancellations soar

British Airways is under pressure to improve its operations as the summer travel rush begins, after a difficult year which has seen its rate of cancellations soar above its rivals.

The airline has cancelled 4,033 flights from UK airports over the past year, nearly double that of low-cost rival easyJet, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium. That equated to 2.3 per cent of its flights from the UK, well above the industry average of 1.4 per cent.

“BA is still suffering from years of cost cutting,” said Chris Tarry, an aviation industry consultant. “In my view BA still has a long way to go, and once you lose a customer it takes a long time to win them back.”

The figures expose how BA’s creaking technology, operational complexity and exposure to London’s Heathrow airport, which operates at full capacity, have combined to leave the airline under pressure as millions of travellers prepare for the summer holidays.

The problems were epitomised in late June when a “temporary technical fault” with BA’s baggage systems, the latest in a long line of glitches at the airline, caused sweeping disruption to passengers with some planes delayed, others taking off without luggage and many left waiting hours for their bags.

“Undoubtedly the operation is BA’s Achilles heel. They are a premium airline and historically it was an airline which had exemplary reliability,” said John Strickland, an aviation consultant and former BA executive. The target for cancelled flights should be 1 per cent or lower, he added.

BA is by no means alone in suffering from a myriad issues, including serious delays and cancellations caused by air traffic control problems. Wizz Air was forced to pare back its schedules dramatically because of engine troubles on many of its aircraft, while Germany’s Lufthansa has suffered sweeping disruption because of strikes.

However, BA has long been a lightning rod for criticism: cost cuts before the pandemic, including the removal of free food and drink in economy on shorter flights, partially reversed by current chief executive Sean Doyle, led to widespread accusations that the brand had lost its reputation for a premium experience.

Although Doyle has prioritised rebuilding the airline’s reputation since he took over at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in late 2020, the operation is stuttering amid soaring demand for travel.

Senior bosses at BA’s owner IAG, an airline conglomerate which also owns carriers including Iberia and Aer Lingus, are supportive, but acknowledge that the airline is in a race to improve its reputation.

Complaints to the UK’s aviation regulator rose by 10 per cent in the first three months of this year, the most recent available data, compared with 2023. The airline notched up the second-most passenger complaints after low-cost airline Ryanair.

“There are a lot of achievable things that BA is now doing [to transform itself]. But they take time, and it does not have much,” one former senior BA executive said.

IAG has promised to spend £7bn on BA over three years, a figure which includes new aircraft. But the recovery programme is complicated by the carrier’s sprawling operations.

It flies a mix of Boeing and Airbus aircraft on both short haul and long-haul flights. These schedules converge at its hub of London’s Heathrow airport, one of the busiest and most congested in the world, where even BA’s rivals agree that it is difficult to recover if delays begin to spiral.

While relations with staff have been reset under Doyle, and new people have been hired to replace those cut in the pandemic, executives concede BA also lost a critical mass of senior managers during the pandemic.

Supply chain issues across the aviation industry have also complicated maintenance.

Jarringly, the problems at BA have come as IAG has piled up record profits amid a post-pandemic travel boom.

“BA has always been IAG’s profit engine . . . but they are playing catch-up because they hadn’t invested until now,” Tarry said.

But Doyle said the recovery — IAG has also recovered its investment grade credit rating — means significant investment can now be spent on improving BA.

BA has already introduced a new operating model at Heathrow, including hiring 350 new frontline staff, changing management reporting lines and upgrading behind-the-scenes technology from IT to baggage scanners.

To upgrade the passenger experience it has promised flyers a new app and website, and major upgrades to lounges and cabins.

“We have put a lot of focus into improving the operations and things are improving,” IAG’s chief executive Luis Gallego told the Financial Times. “If you want to be the best airline then you need to give the best proposal to the customer.”

BA bosses point to recent operational improvements. Just 60 per cent of flights departed or arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled time last year. This improved to 80 per cent of flights by the spring following the changes at Heathrow. The punctuality data does not include cancellations.

BA said its on-time performance at Heathrow was now better than its direct rivals Air France-KLM and Lufthansa at their hub airports.

Executives said internal metrics also showed that customers who fly in the new cabins leave satisfied. But the upgrades are not scheduled to be complete until 2026, leaving many disgruntled flyers with an inconsistent product until then.

Paul Lucas, a frequent flyer and popular airline reviewer on YouTube, who takes between 40 and 50 BA trips a year, believes some of the recent criticism of the carrier has been overblown.

“I think when you talk to British people about BA it is a case of familiarity breeds contempt. Everyone believes their home airline is the worst in the world, other than the Gulf carriers.”

But he only scored BA as a “roughly midtable” airline, far from Gallego’s ambitions for BA to be “the best”.

“It is always at least tolerable,” Lucas added.