British Airways has quietly appointed a new head of customer experience after the last person in the role suddenly announced he was quitting after less than four years, following a series of cost-cutting scandals that further rocked the airline’s reputation.
While there’s still no official announcement from British Airways, sources have revealed that it is all but confirmed that former Lufthansa executive Victoria Schuster has already started working at BA as its Director of Customer Experience in a senior vice president capacity.
Schuster worked her way up through the ranks at German flag carrier Lufthansa, starting her career as a flight attendant in 2007, but a year later, she joined the airline’s management training program.
By 2011, Schuster was working on in-flight product management before cycling through several different roles and then landing as Lufthansa’s vice president of customer experience and product in 2023.
According to Schuster’s LinkedIn profile, she was working at Lufthansa until last month, before moving over to British Airways in February.
Schuster’s predecessor, Calum Laming, isn’t officially meant to leave British Airways until next month, but sources claim he has taken a backseat following the news being made public that he was resigning in December 2025.
Laming only started at British Airways in June 2022, but the airline claims Laming only ever intended to take on the mammoth role for three to four years because it can be so demanding.
Laming will, perhaps, be best known for creating the airline’s confusing ‘British Original’ advertising concept. During his tenure, he also presided over the airline’s disastrous ‘Brunchgate’ scandal in which British Airways tried to get away with serving breakfast instead of lunch in Business Class on long-haul flights.
Frequent flyers have, however, praised Laming for his work on new premium lounges in Dubai and Miami, which will be the template for a global upgrade project, including a complete refurbishment of the airline’s massive lounge network at its Heathrow hub.
Laming also oversaw the redesign of its short-haul fleet cabins and oversaw the design of a new First Class seat that will debut on the Airbus A380 later this year.
Given Lufthansa’s weak reputation for customer experience in recent years, Schuster might seem an odd choice for British Airways if it were planning to address complaints about its own in-flight product.
That being said, Schuster will have firsthand knowledge about Lufthansa’s ambitious Project FOX – a huge endeavor to reimagine the airline’s long-haul in-flight experience in every cabin, which is expected to start rolling out later this year.
Both Schuster and Laming were hired from outside of BA’s parent group, IAG, which also includes Iberia, Aer Lingus, and low-cost airline Vueling.
