British Airways hails ‘game-changer’ tech as punctuality improves

British Airways has credited a £100 million investment in “cutting-edge” technology with boosting its punctuality to record levels.

 

It said the cash injection was part of a £7 billion transformation investment programme announced in 2023 to deliver “a world-class customer experience and better on-time performance”.

 

Sean Doyle, BA chief executive, told the Future Travel Experience World Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh that AI, forecasting, optimisation and machine learning have “transformed” the airline’s operational performance.

 

The first quarter of 2025 saw 86% of its flights on time from its Heathrow base, the highest punctuality performance on record for flights departing within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure time. In 2008, the figure was 46%.

 

Throughout the quarter, BA flights achieved 90%+ on-time departures on 38 of the 89 operational days.

 

In April, two thirds of the airline’s flights departing from Heathrow left ahead of their departure time.

 

This is more than double the number for the same period in 2023 and almost 20% more than in 2024. 

 

Doyle said: “Improving operational performance is a key part of our investment programme because we know the impact delays and disruption can have on our customers.

 

“Whilst disruption to our flights is often outside of our control, our focus has been on improving the factors we can directly influence.

 

“That’s why we’ve invested £100 million in our own operational resilience, putting funding into technology and tools, and devising a better way of working on the ground at Heathrow as well as creating an additional 600 operational roles into the airport.

 

“The tech [that] colleagues have at their fingertips has been a real gamechanger for performance.”

 

More than 100 data scientists are now employed by the airline and about 830 change projects have been introduced.