The future
BA has come a long way since the 1970s and it is now the world’s largest
international passenger airline. The company has maintained steady
profits while many of its competitors have recorded losses year on year
and has emerged as one of the true global players in a rapidly deregulat-
ing industry with ever increasing competition. Table 6.2.4 shows a break-
down of BA’s turnover, profitability and other statistics from 1984 to 1995.
To compare how BA has done against some of its competitors, see Table
6.2.5 and against the industry as a whole, see Tables 6.2.6–6.2.10.
There are still many challenges for BA. Its reputation is not in the clear,
with Virgin Atlantic’s ‘dirty tricks’ court action still possible, and there is
internal debate over the appropriateness of the strapline the ‘World’s
Favourite Airline’. Should it be changed to reflect the global alliances that
now exist for BA? Major corporate buyers are becoming better organized
about travel purchase and demanding reductions in their expenditure.
BA’s alliance partners provide network connections but don’t match BA’s
customer service and return financial losses; and its competition is
responding ever more rapidly to BA initiatives.
Getting to the top is one thing, staying there is something else. Visitors
to a Heathrow engineering site saw two BA staff fast asleep, feet on their
workbenches, at 10 am, in what looked like a scene from a nationalized
industry in Britain in the 1960s. In fact, the visit was made in February
- Complacency is not an option for leading companies and BA recog-
nizes that it must continually renew itself and sustain the pace of change
in order to keep its position in this global industry. Over the next five years,
Creating and implementing relationship marketing strategies 491
Multinationals50 National 3 National
Corporations Agents80 Key Corporations 10 Key Agents600 Corporations Agents – business/leisureFigure 6.2.8 BA UK sales departmental structure.
Source: Datastream.