British Airways CEO fireside chat

In April 2019 the then British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz gave a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society's Heathrow Branch, and yesterday it was the turn of the current CEO Sean Doyle to give us his views.

In 2019 I left BA's hq with the impression that Cruz's primary mission was to tell you how great he was - that he deserved "both parachutes" in Father Ted terms!

I left the Waterside building yesterday with the impression that Sean Doyle is pretty much the opposite of Alex Cruz on that front.  Sean even talked about the need to be yourself and that anything else would be seen as "fake" (high viz jacket reference?).  He also talked about the need to avoid obsessing over networking, and just get on and do your job well.

Fireside Chat

Whereas Alex Cruz gave a structured talk, Sean Doyle chatted to Jonathon Counsell (an IAG director) so unfortunately a lot of the evening was spent listening to Counsell's views rather than Sean's.  It almost seemed like Jonathon thought that he should be running British Airways!

Fleet News

After an initial run through the BA financials (very healthy), we got to hear about some of the upcoming aircraft changes.  New First Class cabins on the A380 will be coming "later this year".  At the same time the A380s will get the Club Suite during their D-Checks starting from mid Summer.  Doyle did admit that BA left the old ying-yang seats without all aisle access on planes "probably too long".  Sean thinks that the current fleet of 12 A380s is probably about right, and has no plans to buy any extra.

He pointed to the B777-9 order as sort of replacing the retired B747s.  And the ordered A350-1000s with higher gross take off weight as replacing the older B777s in the current fleet.

Sean highlighted that the higher efficiencies of modern engines come with trade offs - and that the lower "time on wing" of the B787 engines illustrates this.  He pointed out that B787 engine problems had plagued the type for around half of their operational lives!

Doyle doesn't think the A321XLR is right for BA's business.  Neither did he sound optimistic about a future supersonic aircraft in the BA fleet.  He did talk about the BA fleet shifting towards more long haul aircraft with the suggestion that the current fleet is too heavily weighted towards short haul.

And whilst British Airways will continue to launch the odd new US route, it sounded like he thinks they've almost maxed out on the USA.  He specifically stated that he expected to open up "a bit more rest of the world and Asia" routes as the fleet rebalanced towards long haul.

He is also excited about the introduction of Starlink across the fleet which will mostly happen in the second half of this year and early next year.  He wouldn't give an exact date but said he expected the first BA aircraft with Starlink (which he described as a "game changer") imminently.

BA Operations

Doyle repeatedly used the phrase "Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" as he emphasised the need for people to work together and to focus on execution.  He explained the dramatic improvement in on time departures (up 20 percentage points in two years from a historic low) as partly being due to organising staff into "zone" teams and making sure everybody knew who their manager was.

He admitted that coming out of the pandemic the airline didn't have enough staff and didn't have enough experience and that their IT systems were "fragile".  He repeated a journalist's report that he had been apologising even more than Boris Johnson for pandemic woes.  But he pointed out that the day after the Heathrow fire shutdown in March 2025, the airline ran 94% of their schedule operation and achieved an 88% punctuality rate - despite planes and people being in the wrong places.

Frequent Flyers

Despite receiving 60 questions from the audience in advance of the event, Counsell only asked a handful, including just one on the changes to BA's frequent flyer scheme.  Doyle defended the changes claiming that rewarding spend rather than flying was how airlines would have setup their schemes if they had the technology originally.  And he insisted this is the way that the airline industry is moving, pointing out that all three big US carriers have already made the change.

Doyle also claimed that high spending, but low frequency travellers, not getting top tier status was "starting to be a problem", and claimed that the changes were only fair.  He also outlined the additional opportunities to earn status points through holiday purchases, credit card spend etc.  He expects to see Gold member numbers increase, and a reduction in Silver and Bronze - but admitted there would be "churn" across all tiers.

Sean also stated that the swap to awarding Avios points based on revenue spend had resulted in additional Avios being issued.

IT

Doyle admitted that the British Airways app had fallen behind expected industry levels.  And he revealed that the brand new app is currently on it's 11th trial version.  He stated it will (finally) be released "by the Summer" and expects the user experience to be much better very quickly once it's released.  In contrast Virgin Atlantic has released their app with initially very limited improvements. 

Sean said that last September he turned off the power to the old servers in BA's Cranebank building, and that all their data in now in the Cloud.  He also mentioned that British Airways IT services are now back in house, and praised their IT director.

Heathrow 3rd Runway

Doyle emphasised that UK based airlines employ eight times the number of staff on home soil than foreign airlines operating out of UK airports.  He is making a pitch for a "fair share" of additional slots that a third runway at Heathrow would bring.

He also pointed to the project risks involved in rerouting the M25 and the phenomenal costs, highlighting how much cheaper a second runway at Gatwick will be, and talked about passenger fees approaching £60 per person.

Sean also made the point that additional flights from Heathrow would mean chasing after connecting and more price conscious flyers - which would make an increase in passenger fees after a £49bn new runway even more of a problem.

Why Ireland?

As a closing question Counsell asked Doyle why so many Irish people lead airlines!  Sean pointed to Irish people needing / loving to travel and how Willie Walsh and Alan Joyce had broken the glass ceiling.  He even sounded positive about Michael O'Leary and respected his obsession with cost control. Earlier in the evening Doyle recounted that his first interview at British Airways in 1998 included a flight from Ireland to Stansted ... on Ryanair!