British Airways has doubled a referral bonus for employees who convince their friends or family members to join the airline in a number of key roles. The carrier initially offered a £500 referral bonus but this has now been doubled to £1,000 to match the same sign-on bonus for new hires who pass the recruitment process.
The referral and sign-on bonuses are a sign of just how desperate British Airways is to hire as many new employees as possible as part of what the carrier says is one of its biggest recruitment campaigns ever held.
The bonuses are concentrated on three key roles where staff shortages are holding back BA’s recovery from the pandemic – cabin crew, ground operations agents and transport services agents.
In recent weeks, British Airways has been slammed for lengthy arrival delays and missing luggage which has been attributed to a severe shortage of ground staff. In some cases, aircraft have been forced to depart without any passenger luggage because there wasn’t any staff available to load bags.
The airline is also being forced to proactively cancel hundreds of flights every week because of cabin crew shortages. Last week, chief executive Sean Doyle told staff that even more flights would be cancelled through to the end of June while continuing disruption is likely to last until September at the earliest.
To relieve some pressure, BA has agreed to expensive ‘wet-lease’ deals with other airlines including Finnair, Iberia Express, Vueling and Titan. A wet-lease agreement is where the contracting airline hires both the aircraft and staff from another carrier to operate their own services.
British Airways has also mulled opening a temporary cabin crew base in Madrid where candidates with previous cabin crew experience could undertake a quick training course and then start flying BA planes.
Staff shortages are affecting a number of other airlines including easyJet and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. In the United States, both JetBlue and Southwest say they are trimming back their schedules due to a staffing squeeze.
A massive rebound in travel demand, along with staffing constraints has seen flight prices soar in recent weeks but analysts are concerned rising jet fuel prices could take a chunk out of potential profits.
BA has literally gone to the dogs…..although i dont agree with the use of the dog as the animal in the idiom as that is a wonderful beast known for its loyalty. ironically BA has completely lost the meaning of the word loyalty and is surviving on certain routes like LHR/MUM/LHR as their competitors JET have gone bust at an opportune time for BA to get away with murder.
besides completely and shamelessly ignoring high fare paying paying and gold members requests to restart their first operations,
the sheer number of aircraft type changes, timings, schedules are simply pathetic and mind you their business class fares on this sector now rival or on days beat their pre pandemic first fares, (this of course perhaps based on the fantasy that that pathetic A 350 new business cabin is a FIRST RIVAL) besides they have bumped passengers off and converted their cash paid FLIGHTS ON THE SECTOR to paper vouchers of no value, unless you agree to downgrade yourself as the first cabin itself is withdrawn for years now.
they also operated a FIRST equipped aircraft for months but with dead heading cabin crew occupying the entire first section more or less sending a message to loyal first travellers for decades SITTING BEHIN, that “hey you first traveller…..look who’s sitting up front…..!!!!”
if there was an award for one of the worlds worst managed airlines post pandemic, it is BA. there is no requirement for even a jury.
i mean come on, who in his right mind would chop of staff by the tens of thousands….i mean even a kindergarten student will know that an airline is about service and service is dependent on people….HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT TECHNOLOGY ALONE AND SILLY MARKETING E MAILS……like “dreaming about your next adventure”.
losing senior trained staff is a disaster of their own making and you know what, this airline needs to perish, like jet airways (which unfortunately perished for reasons other than good service) so that a genuine and real BA can be reborn. the BA that did britain proud at a time.
the fact that BA has been in business for 100 years is meaningless, as most oft those were under public/government ownership and not vulture capitalists whose sole aim in life is to make more money for themselves but base these lofty ideals on “cost cutting”….read customer service cutting.
may this airline perish soon so that a proper BA is reborn.