If you find it tough choosing a destination for your family holiday, imagine picking one for an entire airline. As a member of British Airways’ Network Development team at Gatwick airport, William Parker is charged with predicting which places we’ll want to fly to in the future

How do you pick a new destination?
It’s quite complicated and there are many factors that we consider. The process always starts with understanding the customer, but we will often consider the profile of the departure airport. For instance, Gatwick caters for lots of leisure destinations and we recently added Lima to its network. It’s a great fit because it will appeal to a holiday traveller but it’s going to be a more adventurous trip than going to Orlando – it’s something our customers tell us they want.

Are you restricted by available aircraft?
It can be a chicken and egg situation when it comes to choosing the plane and the destination. The availability of aircraft is considered from the outset. When we’re drawing up our list of dream destinations, we’re looking at what aircraft we already have available. The new Lima route meant adding an extra Boeing 777 to the Gatwick fleet. It’s a long-haul aircraft, so now that we have it in the fleet we have been able to explore what other routes we can use it on. The result is the launch of a new service to JFK and in the future, we will be able to explore what other more far-flung destinations we could use it for.

Can you predict the success of a new route?
We’re always tracking the market to see what destinations people are flying to. If somewhere new starts trending, we look at the ways we can capitalise on its popularity. Recently our research revealed that people were flying to Costa Rica from the UK, but there were no direct flights. As a result, this May we’re launching a service to Costa Rica from Gatwick. We’ll be the only carrier flying non-stop to the capital, San José, from Britain. Making it easier to get somewhere also has the knock-on effect of making the destination even more popular.

Do airline partnerships, such as BA’s relationship with IAG help?
Absolutely. It’s good to have inside or local knowledge on the market and help with the practicalities on the ground. For instance, we might need to have some form of physical office in a country in order to be allowed to sell tickets there. If we already work with an airline that has a presence in a destination, that can make life a lot easier.

What new destinations are on your wish list?
I don’t think I can say yet, but we’ll be making some fun announcements for winter 2016 very soon. 

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This article has been tagged BA, Travel Tips