Commercial
Our Commercial team is responsible for managing revenue and pricing, sales, marketing and distribution, as well as planning our fleet and network.
Revenue Management monitors and controls the sale of seats to improve our overall profitability. It also sets the pricing structure to ensure that, in all the countries across our network, we offer the right mix of prices and a flexible range of products.
Our sales force develops and maintains relationships with key customer groups and intermediaries using account management teams around the world. Product information, fares and schedules are distributed either through travel agents using global distribution systems, direct through the contactBA call centres and, increasingly, through our website, britishairways.com.
Our Marketing and Distribution team develops, designs, delivers and promotes our products and services. This team sets our distribution and booking channel strategy, including managing britishairways.com and relationships with the major global distribution systems. It also includes the management of our subsidiaries, British Airways Holidays and Air Miles.
Fleet Planning develops our fleet strategy. It determines when we need to acquire or dispose of aircraft to ensure we have the right fleet to meet our network requirements. Network Planning develops our schedule to maximise network profitability, plans the requisite infrastructure and manages our slot portfolio across the network.
Engineering
Our in-house engineering function manages and maintains our fleet of aircraft and provides limited services to other operators.
Our main base is located on the east side of Heathrow airport, where aircraft management, technical and support staff are located. The main base has extensive facilities to service and repair our Heathrow-based fleet. We have a second, smaller maintenance base at Gatwick to support the fleet based there. Heavy overhaul facilities for Boeing 747, 767, and 777 aircraft are located at Cardiff, Wales, and at Glasgow, Scotland, for Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 family aircraft. In addition, we have component overhaul facilities in Wales and London.
We retain a significant in-house engineering capability to support our fleet, but we also outsource maintenance where it is higher quality or more competitive to do so.
Flight Operations
Our Flight Operations team is responsible for the safe operation of our fleet and is responsible for the recruitment, training and support functions for our pilot community. Approximately 2,900 of our pilots are based at Heathrow, with a further 350 based at Gatwick.
To ensure we operate our aircraft as safely and efficiently as possible, a team of technical experts works closely with the aircraft manufacturers and our own engineers to create and maintain the policies and standards to which we operate our aircraft. Flight planning specialists create the routing, performance and briefing material for our 400 departures per day.
Within Flight Training we run 14 full-flight and four fixed-base simulators. We provide all of our own training requirements, but also generate revenue by selling simulator facilities to other airlines, corporate customers and the general public. A team of fleet-specific training managers is responsible for the management of all recurrent and conversion training.
At our main hub, Heathrow, our passenger services team is responsible for check-in, boarding and special services including assistance for children travelling alone and passengers with disabilities.