Yahoo Finance Passenger fury forces British Airways to hire hundreds of call centre workers
British Airways has vowed to hire hundreds of call centre workers amid passenger fury over long delays in answering calls.
The flag carrier is also cancelling 16,000 flights over the spring and summer as it grapples with staff shortages.
BA chief executive, Sean Doyle, said the airline would hire 500 call centre agents over the next two months as the airline prepares for the busiest time of the year. Some 150 members of staff have been hired already.
The Easter break was marred by a raft of cancellations and reports of hours-long waits to speak to customer service.
Mr Doyle said: “We will build up our capacity in our contact centres over the next two months to the level that we need."
Meanwhile, the BA chief insisted the airline was able to hire enough staff - but was unable to get them up and running because of long delays to security vetting procedures.
In the meantime it plans to reduce its schedules by cutting 8,000 round-trip flights over the coming months. Mr Doyle said that BA would accommodate customers by offering them the option to be transferred to similar flights.
It means that its owner, IAG, will run 80pc of 2019 services this year, down from previously planned 85pc.
The remarks came as the FTSE 100 company announced a €916m pre-tax loss for the first three months of the year. With travel restrictions eased for part of the quarter, revenue jumped from €1bn to €3.4bn.
The worse than expected losses sent IAG shares down by about 10pc. The stock has sunk by 36pc in the past 12 months, piling pressure on its chief executive, Luis Gallego. Meanwhile the share prices of rivals including Air France KLM and Germany's Lufthansa have posted gains.
Alex Irving, analyst at Bernstein, said IAG’s first-quarter result looked “ugly”, despite the results being in line with company guidance.
Mr Gallego said the losses reflected "normal seasonality, the impact of Omicron and costs associated with ramping up operations".
Airlines typically struggle to break even during the winter months, pinning their hopes of demand for summer getaways to turn a profit.
The Spanish executive said demand was "recovering strongly" and the company expected to return to profitability during the period from April to June onwards and for 2022 as a whole.
“Premium leisure continues to be the strongest-performing segment and business travel is at its highest level since the start of the pandemic,” he added.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “There are absolutely no delays to security vetting of applicants. It is wrong to suggest otherwise, and we are prioritising vetting applications from the aviation industry.
"It is for the aviation industry to manage resourcing at airports and staff absences, especially at busy times of the year."
