Kevin O'Toole/LONDON
BRITISH AIRWAYS SAYS that the highly publicised launch of its new long-haul first-class "cabin" concept is just part of a broader £500 million ($776 million) programme to redesign all cabin services over the next three years.
The new first-class offering, which was officially unveiled on 18 September after weeks of speculation, lays down the pattern for what BA promises will be a radical rethink of its whole approach to customer service. The projected outlay will also raise the stakes for competition in lucrative, but dwindling, premium traffic markets.
Traditional first-class seating, for example, is replaced by self-contained, half-partitioned "cabins", with seats which convert into 1.98m (6ft 6in)-long flat beds. Chairman Sir Colin Marshall says that BA holds seven patents on the design.
To incorporate the new concept, BA will cut the number of first-class seats offered on its long-haul fleet, with 14 of the new "flying-bed" units replacing 18 traditional seats on Boeing 747s.
BA nevertheless expects revenues to increase as demand grows for the new service. Marshall admits that existing long-haul first-class services have been running around half full.
Diminishing demand across the industry has already led to carriers such as KLM, Air Canada and Continental Airlines largely abandoning separate first-class services, and speculation had centred on whether BA would be obliged to follow suit.
"People have constantly asked us when we're moving out of first class and this is our response," says managing director Robert Ayling, underlining the airline's commitment to continue increasing its share of premium traffic in an otherwise flat market.
The importance of first- and business-class traffic to BA is underlined by the fact that, while only 15% of overall passengers fly in premium seats, they provide more than two-thirds of revenues, with the bulk of this coming from long-haul operations.
Alongside the new first-class concept, BA has also launched an upgrade to its six-year-old Club World product, including a redesigned seat with 25% more leg room.
BA has already converted around 30 out of its 80-strong long-haul fleet to the new Club World seating standard, while the first-class conversions will begin at the start of 1996.
The whole fleet will have been, converted by the end of 1996, says Marshall, in an investment totaling £115 million.
Marshall says that the next target in the three-year "insight" programme will be to upgrade long-haul economy services, including new seats with 24-channel interactive entertainment systems. BA will then revisit its European operations to complete the cycle of product upgrades, says Marshall.
The total projected investment of £500 million is around double that spent the last ten years since BA first adopted a consumer-style "brand-management" approach to its premium services with Club World in the late 1980s.
Source: Flight International
