Suzanne Shep­pard

British Air­ways (BA), which last year cel­e­brat­ed five decades of ser­vice to T&T and is the longest serv­ing Eu­ro­pean car­ri­er to the Caribbean, has ramped up its first-class ser­vice to cus­tomers in this mar­ket.The flag car­ri­er air­line of the Unit­ed King­dom, BA com­plet­ed a $100 mil­lion prod­uct en­hance­ment in­vest­ment in 2012, which in­clud­ed up­grades to the first-class cab­ins on its air­craft to cre­ate an "in­ti­mate pri­vate jet ex­pe­ri­ence."

That means cus­tomers from T&T and oth­er Caribbean mar­kets can now en­joy the lux­u­ry of seats which con­vert to six-foot ful­ly-flat beds; a Club World menu which com­bines the finest lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­gre­di­ents, with meals served on fine chi­na; ex­ten­sive in-flight en­ter­tain­ment, with per­son­al flat screen; and noise-can­celling head­phones and oth­er first-class op­tions.

This new lux­u­ry ex­pe­ri­ence be­gins even be­fore the first-class trav­eller boards the air­craft, with stress-free check-in open from 24 hours be­fore the flight de­parts, in­clud­ing print, fax or e-mail board­ing pass op­tions to save time at the air­port, re­al-time ar­rival and de­par­ture in­for­ma­tion and live trav­el news.In ad­di­tion, check-in kiosks are now avail­able at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

"Feed­back from cus­tomers helped us de­fine our prod­uct and im­prove on it," ex­plained Mar­cia Er­sk­ine, PR con­sul­tant for BA. "We're in a good space right now but we're al­ways seek­ing to im­prove."Er­sk­ine, who is based in Ja­maica, spoke to the Sun­day Guardian about the new ser­vices BA is of­fer­ing in the re­gion dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to T&T.

The air­line cur­rent­ly op­er­ates re­turn flights from Port-of-Spain to Lon­don Gatwick Air­port via St Lu­cia five times week­ly, as well as one flight per week from To­ba­go to Lon­don Gatwick Air­port via An­tigua.

BA, which has been fly­ing to the Caribbean since 1946, cur­rent­ly serves 11 gate­ways in the Caribbean to Lon­don from Kingston, Nas­sau, Grand Cay­man, Prov­i­den­ciales, An­tigua, Pun­ta Cana, St Kitts, Grena­da, St Lu­cia and T&T. Its op­er­a­tions are cen­tred at its main hub at Lon­don Heathrow Air­port, with a sec­ond ma­jor hub at Lon­don Gatwick Air­port.

The air­line was formed in 1971 from a merg­er be­tween two large Lon­don-based air­lines, British Over­seas Air­ways Cor­po­ra­tion (BOAC) and British Eu­ro­pean Air­ways Cor­po­ra­tion (BEA) and two small­er re­gion­al air­lines, Cam­bri­an Air­ways and North­east Air­lines. Their point per­son in the lo­cal mar­ket is Mar­celle Joseph, the dis­trict man­ag­er for T&T and St Lu­cia.

While oth­er car­ri­ers pro­vide ser­vice be­tween T&T and Lon­don, Joseph said BA has been able to hold its own in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket by demon­strat­ing, through the qual­i­ty of its ser­vice, its strong com­mit­ment. She said the air­line al­so ben­e­fits from sig­nif­i­cant cus­tomer loy­al­ty.Joseph ex­plained that BA not on­ly con­nects trav­ellers to Lon­don and des­ti­na­tions in Eu­rope but al­so "con­nects the Caribbean to each oth­er" with its in­ter-is­land flights.

"While it is a British car­ri­er, we try to be re­spon­sive to the needs of all our cus­tomers," she said.Er­sk­ine said in the com­ing weeks and months, BA's cus­tomers in T&T can look for­ward to a new pro­mo­tion with In­dia as the area of fo­cus. It will be aimed at cre­at­ing wider pub­lic aware­ness of that des­ti­na­tion with the tagline–Get­ting There.

She ex­plained that the car­ri­er not on­ly fo­cus­es on pro­mot­ing the UK but ac­tive­ly sup­ports lo­cal at­trac­tions with the aim of boost­ing the tourism prod­uct here. That in­cludes of­fer­ing spe­cial ho­tel pack­ages for Car­ni­val and oth­er ma­jor T&T events.In ad­di­tion, BA has worked with mem­bers of the T&T Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety, as­sist­ing with get­ting par­tic­i­pants and freight to the an­nu­al Chelsea Flower Show. Sup­port has al­so been pro­vid­ed to a range of lo­cal sport­ing bod­ies, re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er groups, Er­sk­ine said.

She em­pha­sised that the air­line of­fers a full ser­vice ex­pe­ri­ence, from book­ing the flight, to ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tions, car rentals and even tick­ets to at­trac­tions and restau­rants.Putting her own spin on a pop­u­lar say­ing, Er­sk­ine said: "It takes a vil­lage to keep an air­line fly­ing and by keep­ing in touch with our mar­kets, we en­sure that we are able to re­spond to chang­ing needs."