Our tech expert James Godfrey – manager of ba.com and mobile development – has been busy answering your questions about the British Airways app, website and all things digital on the Executive Club front

I loved the new BA app when it was released this year. What other updates can we expect?
When designing the apps, we focused on customer needs during the travel experience. We tested it with customers worldwide, asking them what their mobile needs were and how they would like the app to work for them – so it’s nice to hear positive feedback. Our development teams are looking at areas of improvement. For example, we have just launched intelligent push messaging for smartphones and tablets that will let customers know which gate their Terminal 5 flight is departing from, and when their flight opens for boarding. We also added contextual push messaging using iBeacons – Apple’s Bluetooth wireless technology, used to provide location-based information and services to iPhone and other iOS devices. This will welcome customers to the lounges in T5 and provide easy access to the lounge Wi-Fi password.

Customers can also expect other improvements: how you search and buy flights with the app (with either cash or Avios); the content, look and feel of the Executive Club area; and the ease of changing or upgrading bookings.

When are you going to update the Windows Phone app?
We launched a big update to the Windows Phone app, which went live at the end of October. It added a personalised home screen, which intelligently presents the customer with the most useful information. Users can also now easily manage their flights, check flight statuses on the move, see their Executive Club account balance, book flights and get mobile boarding passes.

When is BA going to upgrade its website to make it more user-friendly for Members?
We are constantly looking at ways to improve the online experience for our Executive Club Members. Over the past few months, we have provided various enhancements: we now let customers save their payment cards to their account to speed up their booking or upgrade process; we save their travel companions’ details to improve the speed and ease of use; and we launched Lifetime Tier points and My Flightpath.

We are about to launch ‘your frequent trips’ to allow customers to book their regular flights easily, and there will shortly be a new mobile-booking experience for Avios redemptions.

The app looks and feels great, but you cannot use it for two people on a reservation. Why can’t I bring up both boarding passes?
We are looking into extending this, but it requires agreement from the various airport authorities, who sometimes have concerns around people having to pass devices between each other. We will improve this functionality as soon as we can.

Our customers seem to love using mobile boarding passes because they can store it on their device (so it doesn’t need a network connection to retrieve it), pick their seat, and get lock screen access to it – which helps speed them through the airport experience and saves paper. Usage has grown by more than 650 per cent in the past three years.


Each of our gurus will endeavour to answer your questions on the most popular topics in future editions of the magazine. Look out for the next issue with BA Holidays guru Claire Bentley.

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This article has been tagged BA, Travel Tips