Cracking the bizarre paradox of British Airways (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love Virgin Atlantic)
Ask any Brit aged between 40 and 60 to name their favourite airline, and chances are 9 times out of 10 you’ll get the same answer within about five seconds: ‘British Airways’. It’s a strange reflex that seems to come pre-installed in middle aged British people — they don’t just like BA, they LOVE it. As a young person, who has only ever really known BA as not that great, I’ve always had trouble understanding this, so I figured I’d do a bit of digging to understand this strange paradox of brand loyalty.
The answer is actually much more simple than one might think, but in order to explain it (and fill out my word count) I’m going to talk for a bit about James Bond. Bear with me.
Everyone has their favourite Bond, and usually the idea is that whatever Bond you grew up watching is yours. I grew up with the campy madness of Moonraker and Live and Let Die filling my Sunday afternoons, so naturally I love Roger Moore, even though (and it pains me to admit it) those films do not hold up at all. Some people like Sean Connery, and some people for some inexplicable reason like George Lazenby. If you’ve not picked up on where I’m going with this I’ll spell it out for you: basically, this terrible analogy is trying to explain the bizarre loyalty some people have for certain airlines.
Actually, now that I think about it, every Bond has an airline that just about matches them: Sean Connery is Pan Am: a symbol of the golden age, the original (and probably still the best), with a sparkling run ended all too abruptly, before being brought back for a terrible attempted revival. Lazenby is the ill fated Icelandic airline WOW Air: short lived, and actually a lot better than people give it credit for. Timothy Dalton is American: a solid offering, but panned by the public for being a bit evil. Pierce Brosnan is Emirates: shiny and new, a bit gaudy, and extremely expensive, and Daniel Craig is (fittingly) Virgin Atlantic: absolutely brilliant in every way (no they’re not paying me) and full to the brim with booze.
And finally, Roger Moore is BA: extremely popular in the 80s and 90s, but in reality, never as good now as you remember it being. But you somehow love him anyway.
Painfully stretched metaphors aside, you hopefully get my point. People love BA so much because back in the 80s and 90s, they did indeed represent the pinnacle of airborne quality and luxury. In 1998 they were the first airline to introduce lie-flat beds in business class, making a slightly floundering class of travel the sought after luxury experience it is today. As the official flag-carrier of the UK they held (and continue to hold) an enormous amount of real estate at Heathrow (which was at the time certainly the world’s best airport), where they could park their massive fleet of sparkling Jumbo Jets. And then, of course, there was Concorde. No airliner before or since (save perhaps the Boeing 747) has made such an indelible impact on the hearts of the travelling public. It was beautiful, insanely fast and shockingly comfortable. I never flew it, sadly (it was retired just two years after I was born), but even to me it holds an ethereal air of prestige and elegance.
But those days are over. Concorde is nothing but a memory, the jumbos are sadly being slowly retired. BA now has one of the worst long haul economy products out there, and their once celebrated business class has fallen to being perhaps the most reviled of any airline. One only has to look at one of the many video reviews of Club World (Dennis Bunnik’s is excellent) to see how people feel about this former giant. So what went wrong? Well, as far as I can tell, BA decided at the turn of the century that their hard product was so good, that it never needed to be updated or changed ever again. It really does feel like that’s the case.
What’s very telling though, is that as much as I gawk in abject confusion at some people’s continuing love of BA, I can feel exactly the same feeling beginning to grip me. Except the airline in question isn’t BA — it’s Virgin Atlantic. I do plan to write a full article (or perhaps just an ode) at some point about just why I love Virgin so much, but I think that at the very heart of it is the fact that it’s the airline I remember most from my childhood — that deep red livery, the cool cabins, the thrill of flying on a jumbo for the first time. You see, BA are good at retaining loyalty, sure, but Virgin are better than anyone else.
There’s an old adage in advertising that says that the best ads don’t sell a product, they sell a feeling. Richard Branson is THE master of this. When you fly with Virgin you feel like a god damn rockstar, no matter what section of the plane you’re in (over the last ten years, I’ve flown in every class Virgin offer, so I can attest to this). And it’s not just the feeling you get when you fly with them that makes Virgin so good at this — there’s also the product itself. Flying Club is one of the best loyalty programs out there — relatively easy to earn miles and status points mean that there’s much more of an incentive for people new to the brand to keep flying with them — a single return trip in upper class from London to Johannesburg can put you in the silver tier, which lets you earn 30% more miles on every flight and gives you priority check in, boarding, and at some airports even priority security… It’s hard to argue with a deal that good. The well maintained, spacious and dimly lit cabins, best-in-class service and remarkable safety record are just the cream cheese icing on an already delicious red velvet cake.
Now look. I’m an 18 year old actor and therefore have absolutely no experience in either customer service or advertising. What I do have, however, is all of Mad Men on Netflix and a unique perspective as part of the next generation of airline customer (one that is rapidly becoming conscious of, and in many cases deeply skeptical of flying altogether). So from me, a completely unqualified actor who happens to really like planes, here’s what BA need to learn from Virgin:
Update, Update, Update, and for God’s sake listen to your customers:
By the time the romance of Virgin being the airline of choice for Daniel Craig’s Bond (another stroke of advertising genius from Branson and the gang) had worn off a bit, people started realising that the herringbone layout of Virgin’s upper class cabins was a bit mental, and Virgin started to realise that people definitely don’t want to talk to or look at each other while flying. So two years ago they announced a total overhaul of their upper class, premium and economy cabins. Virgin’s new hard product represents pretty much the best in class in every single cabin, and they achieved this simply by listening to what people want. BA on the other hand have only just started to roll out their just-about-good new Club World cabin, but haven’t proposed any changes in premium or economy. They’re not giving the people what they want — or at least, aren’t doing it fast enough.
Change with the times:
The single biggest threat airlines face is how bad planes are for the environment. And they are really, really terrible. Virgin have adopted the extremely efficient Airbus A350 and are phasing out their antiquated A340s — making their fleet look increasingly climate-conscious. BA, on the other hand, are still taking pride in their fleet of old school jumbos and 777s (though there are positive signs of change in their slow introductions of A350s and 787s).
Play it cool:
The problem with BA’s exceptional heritage and flag-carrier status is one that very few people seem to pick up on: it makes them just a little bit stuffy. If they want to attract new, young customers to the airline then they need to shed their antiquated branding, and, perhaps most importantly, do everything they can to avoid being branded ‘Brexit Air’. The design of the new Club World cabin isn’t particularly interesting, and BA need to make an effort to jazz up their image to match that of the competition.
At the end of the day, BA are an iconic brand, with a fantastic history and huge commercial potential for the future, but what they, and other massive airlines like United and Lufthansa need to do to not just survive in years to come, but thrive, is realise that heritage can only get you so far. To gain and retain loyalty from customers takes a lot more than nostalgia, and until BA realises this, they may find themselves slipping towards a slow demise.