British Airways has doubled down on its cost-cutting measures as per the latest reports and has affected more than 1,000 jobs.
The 9.5m annual calls to British Airways call centres in Newcastle and Manchester are in line to be outsourced to the services company Capita. It said, “we have entered a period of exclusive engagement with British Airways to explore forming a potential partnership to support its global customer contact operations.”
Although no contract has been signed, the outsourcing strategy has been adopted by IAG, BA’s holding company. Since BA and Iberia set it up in 2011, the firm has been shedding non-core activities.
The Bank Holiday meltdown, where hundreds of cancelled flights affected tens of thousands of passengers was blamed on the collapse of the airline’s IT system. BA, however, refused the accusation that outsourcing played a part in the fiasco.
The largest centre is at Newcastle Business Park, where British Airways has around 750 staff. The Manchester call centre employs around 350 people. In addition, BA has a Delhi-based call centre, which is not under discussion at present.
