What British Airways news did we get from IAG’s Capital Markets Day?

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• Can2 says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:16

  If I gave a talk with 137 slides….

  • Rob says:

    30 Nov30 November 08:44

    Share price did drop 4% during it, remember.

    • can2 says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:22

      :)) excellent point

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    30 Nov30 November 11:07

    But no one person gave such a talk – it wasn’t an endless stream of talking by PowerPoint,

• Can2 says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:17

  I really force myself to believe these, but no still can’t — until I see it: especially the IT and Club Suite bits

  • AJA says:

    30 Nov30 November 08:57

    Wasn’t the original plan for Club Suite to be rolled out by 2024? I mean if this new target is by 2026, which surely means the end of 2026 otherwise they’d have said end of 2025, it will be a 7 year roll out by which time the first cabins with it will need replacing. And that doesn’t include any Gatwick based aircraft.

    It’s no wonder the share price dropped during the presentation with positive statements like that.

    • JDB says:

      30 Nov30 November 10:11

      There really is zero correlation between the rollout of Club Suite in BA and the IAG share price and they are still filling the old seats. IAG’s reluctance to comment on near term trading beyond the guidance already in place for this year was interpreted negatively. IAG/BA were cautious about the timescale (“medium term”) for restoration of the dividend and reaching the new margin targets.

      The reaction was a little odd in that a capital markets day isn’t really the right place for a trading update. Perhaps it just reminded people that maybe now isn’t the ideal time to be investing in airlines.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:10

      There were all sorts of production delays during after the pandemic including supply of parts issues that have clearly delayed the roll out.

    • Rhys says:

      30 Nov30 November 12:28

      2025 was the pre-covid plan, so 2026 is not a huge delay.

• Mikeact says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:18

  I would have liked to know, what searching questions were asked by the investors, but I guess we will never know.

• SharonC says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:20

  Deary me, how an airline doesn’t know its passengers.
  66% of BA passengers live in the ‘more affluent’ South East – yes, that’s because they don’t fly from anywhere else! Gone are the days of British Airways Birmingham and other regional routes.
  75% of BA passengers are travelling for leisure – well, that shows that most business travel is now flown on other airlines who offer a much better ‘business’ service.
  The last flight I did with BA was in Club suites from Cape Town barely 2 months ago and it was appalling – rude staff and poor service. I only flew them because I was using a CV otherwise I would have flown on another carrier; we’d flown out on Qatar and it was a completely different level of service and comfort.

  • Mikeact says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:23

    ‘75% are leisure travellers’ would be of major concern to me…. you need the high paying 25% business market to vastly increase if you are to ensure overall investment etc., is maintained. I’m just one leisure traveller and I certainly don’t have to fly BA..plenty of alternatives out there. And how many Avios collectors, not on here, don’t realise the futility of saving for a dream long haul destination..

    • Bagoly says:

      30 Nov30 November 19:20

      On long-haul less than 25% of the seats are in CW/First.
      And in short-haul, if they were selling 25% of seats at full fare, they’d be fine.
      So in theory that could be enough. although I realise that’s not the whole picture.

      Actually, what is their definition?
      If Business is “booked through corporate travel schemes” they will be missing some of short-haul – at three large company employers we all booked our short-haul travel independently, direct online.

• Jack says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:21

  I think you will still need to call for some issues as there is no airline worldwide that allows you to do absolutely everything online for many reasons . More complex enquires especially are much better done via the call centre than online . I am curious as to what end to end trip management means in true detail as the website is likely to remain the same with some tweaks made to it . The improvement of on time performance is very welcome indeed and indeed the last few flights I’ve taken have all arrived either on time or early . I think since COVID less people are travelling for business and premium travel is definitely going to be a market that is going to increase massively over time even more than it has already . I think having back up systems on the desks are T5 as many airlines have is a good thing and should have really always been in place . The fact about only 66% of ba customers living in the south east does suprise me however

  • Novice says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:44

    Live chat is a better option. I booked a tour yesterday on live chat and honestly it was awesome. No wait and no confusion of enquiries also can save for future in case of proof.

    • memesweeper says:

      30 Nov30 November 09:51

      +1

      and more efficient for the “call centre” staff too in terms of calls closed per hour

      @jack — many LCCs are at or very close to 100% servicing online… and many full-service carriers are much, much better than BA at this. Having said that, I’m sure BA will not be able to stop themselves from offering various incentives and vouchers that require a call to *book*, even if subsequent management is online.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        30 Nov30 November 11:18

        LCCs are basically stand alone systems that don’t have to integrate with systems like Amadeus so are far less complicated but more flexible.

        They don’t offer things like 2-4-1 vouchers or run loyalty schemes which also simplifies things for them.

        And they don’t have complicated flights with lots of connections to deal with either, if BA only sold tickets on BA flights the IT would be a lot simpler but at the price of limiting flight options available to us customers.

      • Jack says:

        30 Nov30 November 16:20

        BA is not a LCC though is it and it handles a considerably higher amount of traffic then such airlines some of whom wrongly charge you to check in at the airport against people’s will to make a quick buck at the passengers expense . They also sell things such as connections within alliances which other lower cost carriers do not offer so it is vastly different. Management will not be done online as you will still need to have a contact centre hence BA making investments in this .

        • No longer Entitled says:

          30 Nov30 November 20:47

          @Jack, BA do not carry more traffic. Far from it. Ryanair are the third largest airline with about 170m passengers (IAG combined are only 90m). Southwest, IndiGo are bigger. easyJet about the same.

        • PH says:

          30 Nov30 November 22:33

          Look at the IT of United Airlines compared to BA – light years ahead. Easy to make changes to complex bookings online, vouchers easy to redeem / be issued as ‘change’, etc

        • Jack says:

          1 Dec1 December 06:42

          BA do carry more traffic to a wider range of destinations than the vast majority of other airlines within the UK . There are of course some exceptions but the fact remains that BA offers much more services than LCCs do and always has and will do

• TooPoorToBeHere says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:30

  [QUOTE]‘Enhanced food and beverage offering in the BA lounges’ (slide 55) – not sure how that fits with removing the QR-code food ordering and putting the same food in Galleries First and Club ….[/QUOTE]

  It’s literally right there, the first word: Enhanced.

  • AJA says:

    30 Nov30 November 08:58

    😀 I wish I could give your comment a like.

  • RussellH says:

    30 Nov30 November 10:48

    When you say “removing the QR-code food ordering ” do you mean that BA are actually getting rid of ordering by machine instead of by talking to a real person?
    Three cheers for that!

    Trying to order food via a grubby, faded, sticky QR thingy on a hotel bar table was jut about the worst aspect of lockdown.

    • A350 says:

      30 Nov30 November 10:56

      No. What Rob says is correct. The removal of QR code ordering has not been replaced by in-person ordering of A La Carte dishes. The food is essentially all but the same now across all LHR BA lounges (except CCR) which is poor showing from BA! I can only presume you haven’t visited Galleries First recently based on your comment.

• Panda Mick says:

  30 Nov30 November 08:57

  If they want to get to the Nirvana of “not needing the call” then “Automated processes and introduction of AI solutions” is imperative

  Natural language text, such as “show me flights from london to los angeles that are direct with british airways only that have availability in upper class”, processing has been available for some time

  I can ask my iPhone to show me photos of trees from the lake district from last year, so the technology is there.

  • jj says:

    30 Nov30 November 09:18

    But I just asked ChatGPT for the best beaches on my favourite Greek island, and it recommended some that don’t exist and made factual errors about most of the others. So the technology doesn’t yet work very well.

    I’m returning home from a conference where AI was the main theme. This was the message I heard: AI can give your business infinite interns, but the interns aren’t very smart, reliable or honest. That’s fine for things where I need to be right more than wrong (maybe choosing a stock to invest), but terrible for things where I always need to be right (helping a customer).

    I fear that someone in BA has been talking to a snake-oil vendor.

    • memesweeper says:

      30 Nov30 November 09:54

      A generative AI trained on a dataset of the world may well not be super-great at customer service.

      Train an AI exclusively with your business processes and customer interactions and you may find it’s actually better than humans — in particular newly trained, inexperienced humans.

    • NorthernLass says:

      30 Nov30 November 11:48

      ChatGPT is totally unreliable, I have caught out a few students that way!

• Spaghetti Town says:

  30 Nov30 November 09:05

  So Rob, would you endorse the shares now? 🙂

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