JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

BA rolls out first-class upgrades

...UK car­ri­er acts on cus­tomer feed­back

by

20140316

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."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored