Growth of British Airways

 

Growth of British Airways

 

Throughout my childhood and adulthood, the British Airways became my go-to place for every mile of my travels. I have had the opportunity to fly with many different airlines, but the satisfaction of meeting my fellow travelers never took precedence over the journey. My parents and I flew to Europe once every two years, and after years of flying with BA, I knew they were the only airline I had to give any consideration. BA has served the best of British culture for more than a century, and I felt I had worked for them enough.

Considering many of my favorite vacations have taken place on BA—both in Europe and abroad—I thought that at 27, I had worked for my last two years with the airline. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only am I the youngest employee of BA, but I served as a representative of the employees for the past two years, learning the ropes, taking the time to listen to the customers, and working alongside my fellow coworkers and manager to think, plan, and achieve success for the company.

“Goodbye B”

Not quite—as I mentioned before, many of my wonderful memories came from the BA Festival that they host every January. I volunteered at the festival for my very first BA festival and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award when I was just 18 years old. It was a truly amazing experience and I am extremely happy to put my plaque on my current home office wall. If that wasn’t enough, I am now 26 and have been with BA full-time since I was 21.

However, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t take just as much pride in seeing the good that BA has done, which is something that I never saw coming. When discussing with my manager about a new job we had agreed on, I told her about my enthusiasm for working for the airline’s training staff. She laughed and said, “You really should be doing something with the curriculum that your company is preparing you for.

According to most, you would say I couldn’t be too excited about this, but BA’s “stay engaged in the business” program has been in operation for over three decades and is a truly worthwhile experience.

During my first tour to New York City for the festival of which I volunteered, a random foot client said, “Your role sounds like fun. When do you get back?”, which, of course, was a surprise! After more than one hour of being alone in a different town I hadn’t seen before, I was ecstatic at my excitement at the word “return.”

After signing-in, we were then whisked away to a marketing cafe where we were given free food and drinks, plus our photo with the British Airways mascot Baba. Within an hour, I was relieved to see the waiter arrive to personally serve me. This was my first experience of physical interaction with any BA staff. He served me quickly and with an air of professionalism.

Once we all finished working and exited the cafe, my manager invited me to sit on the floor and chat with the engineers that were testing the WiFi-enabled screens on the monitors in the cafe. He then instructed me to participate in the British Airways marketing team business study. I researched the market research and asked myself, “What do I want to achieve?” The response was a little surprising.

My recent employees saw myself as “unvetted employee” and my peers didn’t understand why I would want to be involved in a business study with so many other BA employees. But my training team gave me a rationale for why I was interested. My training group manager told me I wouldn’t be doing such “an intrusive, intrusive study” at any other airline, so we would get to the core of the matter. It showed me that there are ways to collaborate between managers and employees to achieve success. From that study, I understood a more streamlined structure that makes coordination easier and streamlines work.

Whenever my group manager asked what my most important goal was in the future, I now found myself thinking, “To continue to work in the airline industry”. The BA Festival is my first time attending a similar festival I have worked in before. I knew that the “stay engaged in the business” program would not only benefit myself but many other employees—not just my group, but every BA employee—a fact that reminds me that I served in the same program my own training group did when I joined BA.