Former British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz, who suffered a serious data breach while running the carrier, has warned that airlines are being left behind by more nimble digital rivals because of their outdated technology.
“If you look at the underlying systems that all big airlines . . . rely on, it is 20, 30, 40, 50-year-old technology, it is truly amazing to see,” he said in his first interview since he stood down as BA boss last October.
Cruz, who has joined the board of Israeli digital start-up Fetcherr, was in charge of BA during a 2018 data breach that exposed personal and financial data of more than 400,000 customers.
The airline said it had made considerable improvements to security since the breach, which led to a £20m fine from the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Cruz also warned that the rise of companies with user-friendly technology such as Uber had left consumers demanding a better experience.
This is putting pressure on airlines to raise their game, particularly after widespread complaints over the processing of refunds from cancelled flights during the pandemic.
“We are being educated as consumers, to have super-high expectations on what digital relationships should be like with brands, [and] guess what, there are no travel brands today that can deliver that type of experience,” Cruz said.
He was ousted as BA boss in a management shake-up by parent company IAG, but stayed as the airline’s non-executive chair until this March.
Cruz has since become an adviser and board member at Fetcherr, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to forecast prices in the travel industry.
While the aviation industry has traditionally used pricing models based on demand over previous years, the pandemic has led to passenger demand becoming fast-shifting and hard to predict — which Fetcherr hopes to capitalise on.
Cruz also defended his sometimes stormy stewardship of the British national flag carrier, arguing that companies that took tough decisions during the pandemic would emerge strengthened.
“There are some airlines that worked really, really hard at understanding what life is going to be after the pandemic . . . and there’s been others that haven’t, and those will take significantly longer to recover,” he said.
Cruz was often a lightning rod for criticism at BA, such as the airline’s treatment of staff when it cut about a third of its workforce as the coronavirus crisis ripped through aviation.
But he said he had left the carrier in a position to recover quickly from the crisis, and spoke of “a great sense of pride” over how the airline and its staff reacted to the pandemic.
Before the crisis, Cruz had already faced questions over service cuts such as the removal of free meals in economy, which has since been reversed.
In an unusual intervention, IAG’s largest shareholder Qatar Airways told the FT last month that the former BA boss had misstepped as he gained a reputation for cost-cutting.
But some industry executives suspect that Willie Walsh, the former boss of IAG, had a hand in the cuts as he gave Cruz the task of making BA more cost-efficient to help it compete with budget rivals
Cruz also received little credit for masterminding more than £6bn of investment in new cabins and products — the benefits of which will be enjoyed by his successor Sean Doyle as the industry recovers.
