Imagine you have a personal driver. (I know it’s not easy but stick with me on this). His name’s Barry and he’s ferried you around loyally on various trips all over the world for over forty years.
He knows pretty much everything there is to know about you, does Barry. He likes to be called Ba’ for short and Ba’ knows where you like to sit, what you fancy for lunch, your taste in wine, which hotels you prefer as well as the names of your entire family and their habits and preferences too. Then one day you ring him up and he denies all knowledge of you, asking you to prove your identity and confirm your date of birth every five minutes. Clearly Ba’ has some serious issues.
Well, this is exactly how I feel about British Airways, or BA for short. Having invested what must be a few hundred thousand pounds in BA over the course of more than forty years it acts as if it’s never heard of me. Ever since the launch of the app back in 2008 BA have certainly had all my personal details online, but way before that in the mid eighties I was a member of their prestigious ‘Super Club’ which by 1988 had morphed into the sector defining, luxury brand Club World, with its uplifting theme tune (Flower Duet from Leo Delibes’ opera Lakme…apparently) its almost fully reclining ‘slumberseat,’ plastic headsets to replace the beige stethoscopic ones and, memorably, the free pour Tanqueray gin and tonics (ie. not miniature). Oh, those were the days: real china, metal cutlery, a leatherette goodie bag and a proud crest embroidered on every damn thing you set your eyes upon. (This was, of course, long before Martin Sorrel messed things up with his confusing ‘World Images’ nonsense).
Britain was flying high at the time and as we sipped on our extra strong G&Ts from a grown up glass, we felt we were really going somewhere. Which, of course, we were.
Fast forward forty years and, quite remarkably, BA continues to reflect our national status so magnificently today: tired, bored, guilty and riddled with self loathing, that’s us: we feel guilty for flying (obviously) for drinking (naturally) for daring to be in business class, and worse, for daring to be in business at all. Success in business is certainly nothing to be celebrated in today’s climate, unless you include Instagram influencing as a business.
This is the strategic genius of BA. Our national airline is the perfect standard bearer for the decline, malaise and self doubt that is slowly dismantling our funny little island. This is why BA makes you feel like a low life chancer in return for decades of your loyalty. It’s not an accident. It’s why they unleashed an army of cost cutters, portion controllers and value engineers into the cabin. It’s why your refreshing gin and tonic has turned into warm water served in a plastic beaker. It’s why your napkin’s the size of a second class stamp. It’s why your complimentary packet of crisp, not crisps, is no fatter than a beermat. It’s why the BA app persistently asks you to log into the app while you’re actually in the bleeding app. It’s why Avios points are harder to spend than Bitcoin at your local butcher. It’s why they delight in demoting you when you haven’t flown enough and call you sir and madam when telling you to step back behind the line. It’s why the sullen girl you tried to cheer up at check in has not the faintest memory of you at the gate. Haven’t you worked it out yet? It’s designed to piss you off.
On a recent short hop across to Amsterdam our wider than average Senior Cabin Manager (dear god, the aisles on those Airbus 220s are snug) annunciated poetically from her notes over the PA:
“We will be adjustin’ the cabin lightin’ for take off and landin’”
Ceremoniously, she then drew the tatty little caravanette curtain across the six feet that was Club Europe. I can only assume this was to prevent us poor Euro Travellers from catchin’ a glimpse of a regular sized packet of crisps.
Howard Saunders is a writer, speaker and the Retail Futurist
howard@22and5.com
@retailfuturist
