Back in our earlier piece, we asked whether British Airways’ leadership could regain control of its IT. The question no longer stands. The answer is a resounding no.
The delusional folk holed up in BA’s Waterside headquarters still seem to believe that slick decks and buzzwords about “AI transformation” will distract from the reality. Yet the reality is bleak: even the most basic customer touchpoint – the booking website – is riddled with bugs.
Take flight bookings. Twice recently I reached the payment step, only to find the 3D Secure page – the bank approval step – simply never loaded. Mastercard, Amex, it didn’t matter. The screen just spun endlessly with no timeout, no error message, no hope. Only later, and only via the mobile app, was I able to complete the booking once I’d convinced myself nothing had been processed. This is amateur-hour stuff that basic monitoring would expose.
Even when the site does work, restarting a booking flow is like pulling the handle on a fruit machine. Sometimes you’re logged in, sometimes you’re not. Sometimes your BA Club details pull through, other times they vanish. I’ve even clicked “log in” only for the page to reload and announce I was already logged in. What does it say about the way they’re handling browser session security?
And then there’s the insult piled on top of injury. As a Club Europe cash passenger – and, lest Waterside forget, a BA Club Gold member – the booking flow decided to charge me £25 for a seat. Close the browser, start again, and magically, the price reverts to £0. It shouldn’t take three refreshes to get what your status entitles you to.
The app isn’t any better. Obtaining a mobile boarding pass is a coin toss at best. Half the time the “Get Boarding Pass” button fails silently. The other half, the app loops back to check-in as if mocking you for trying. Passengers resort to PDFs or printed passes like it’s 2003.
And through all this, BA’s leadership still think Club members want to pay £22,000 – £24,000 annually for this “service”. It’s frighteningly delusional. Read the forums: customers are fed up and shifting business to carriers who actually have their digital houses in order. Emirates, Lufthansa, Delta – their systems work. BA’s does not.
Year after year, the airline trumpets billion-pound “technology transformations” led by consultants who fly in, draw diagrams, and leave behind yet another mess. Nothing changes, except the bill. Passengers still find themselves staring at frozen checkout screens and broken apps while BA talks up its “game-changing AI”.
So let’s stop pretending. British Airways will not fix its IT under its current leadership. The rot is cultural, not technical. Until IAG is willing to rip out its legacy mindset along with its legacy systems, BA will remain a byword for technological ineptitude – the airline that can’t even take your money properly.
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