BA Better World
Find out how we’re putting sustainability at the heart of our business – reducing our emissions and waste, contributing to the communities we serve and creating a great place to work for our people.
responsible business
Embedding sustainability in all we do
For more than 30 years, British Airways has supported community initiatives across the UK and around the world. We're now creating a BA Better World Community Fund to deliver life-changing opportunities and aid to the communities we serve.
Community Investment
BA Better World Community Fund
Our new BA Better World Community Fund delivers life-changing opportunities in the communities we serve, enabling us to support projects that deliver benefits for climate, communities, our colleagues and nature. It also enables us to deploy our people and resources to help communities affected by crisis.
Find out moreFlying Start
Flying Start is our global charity in partnership with Comic Relief, helping to give disadvantaged young people a chance to have a brighter future. Thanks to the generosity of our colleagues and customers, Flying Start has raised more than £26 million, helping more than 800,000 disadvantaged young people in the UK and around the world have the best possible start in life. In the past three years, we’ve raised more than £2 million alone for early childhood development projects in the UK, India, South Africa and Ghana. These projects include community-based health and education services, as well as providing support to families with young children.
Helping communities respond in times of crisis
Our partnership with the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) ensures that vital relief gets to where it’s needed, as soon as possible. The DEC brings together 14 leading UK aid agencies to raise money when there’s a humanitarian crisis. By working together as a member of the DEC’s Rapid Response Network, we raise funds to save, protect, and rebuild lives in vulnerable communities that are impacted by major disasters. Since 2013, we’ve raised more than £1.5 million to help people affected by humanitarian crises through our work with the DEC.
We also work with other humanitarian organisations to help relief workers get where they need to be, and in partnership with IAG Cargo, shipments of lifesaving supplies.
Noise and local air quality
We’re committed to minimising the impact of noise from our aircraft on local communities by investing in new aircraft that have half the noise footprint, training our pilots to follow quieter approach and departure procedures and regularly monitoring the noise performance of our aircraft fleet. We also engage with regulators, airports, communities and other stakeholders to explore opportunities to reduce the noise of our operations. We record and report our sustainability performance, including levels of carbon emissions and noise.
Sustainability Governance
Our British Airways Better World sustainability strategy is aligned to IAG’s vision to be the leading airline group on sustainability and is embedded in British Airways' delivery groups. It is also aligned to two global frameworks: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the World Economic Forum’s stakeholder capitalism framework for consistent reporting of sustainable value creation.
We have a robust internal governance framework that extends from the Board of our parent company IAG through to British Airway’s Management Committee and into deliver groups. Our ESG performance data is independently audited as part of our Group Annual Report and Accounts process in addition to our own compliance audits.
Read our Sustainability Performance Report 2021 [PDF 3,245 KB]Modern slavery and human trafficking statement
British Airways has a robust modern slavery and human trafficking policy in line with our parent company IAG. Our colleagues, flight and cabin crew are trained to identify vulnerable customers and handle suspected human trafficking violations.
British Airways has a zero-tolerance approach to Modern Slavery.
Read our full statement [PDF 44KB]Environment Policy
British Airways has a robust Environment Management System to identify environmental risks and opportunities, set objectives, deliver compliance and monitor performance. We are committed to continually improving our EMS to enhance our environmental performance.
Our EMS is aligned to ISO14001:2015 and accredited to Stage 1 of the IATA Environmental Assessment (IEnvA) programme.
Read our Environment Policy
