British Airways is attempting to address complaints levelled by frequent flyers about the useability (or lack thereof) of its website and mobile app. Long the butt of jokes amongst BA’s most loyal customers, the airline has now secured investment from its Madrid-based parent company to fix some of the problems.
The airline recently told employees that it wanted to create a “seamless and personalised experience” for passengers who are booking, managing or getting ready for their next flight via the British Airways website or app.
Littered with bugs and frequently derided by customers, the British Airways website is set for a major redesign, with a team of more than 200 people currently working on ironing out the problems that have plagued BA’s internal IT systems for years.
The new look and feature-rich website is set to be released later this year, initially in beta test mode to a small number of people, before being unleashed on the wider public.
Amongst the most demanded features, BA plans to integrate more self-service options that were previously unavailable. Until now, even minor changes pushed passengers to wait on hold with the airline’s overwhelmed call centres.
Working under the code name Nexus, not all of the features will be welcome by bargain-hunting passengers. British Airways is also hoping to introduce dynamic live pricing as part of the IT update as well as improved retargeting marketing communications.
British Airways has been left red-faced by a number of embarrassing IT meltdowns, the most recent of which was last March when staffers said they were spat at by angry customers who unleashed their fury on frontline employees.
Following a 2018 data breach which compromised the personal data of over 400,000 customers and staff, British Airways was slapped with a £20 million fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The airline was initially ordered to pay a record £180 million fine, but BA managed to get the penalty reduced significantly on appeal.
Can’t believe ‘dynamic live pricing’ is almost an afterthought here. It marks the death of BA Avios, like Delta Skypesos and soon American AAdvantage miles: all greatly devalued to the point that this hobby becomes a waste of time.
Many airlines have already adopted dynamic pricing as have hotel chains this does not mean it will be applied to the exec club as it wouldny work. At this point it is merely a thing of whether or not they will as I said BA and other airlines have worked on a supply and demand bais for flights aka dynamic pricing in any other word . It does not make the death of BA avios at it likely will not affect them or devalue them