British Airways woos city's US-bound techies for growth

British Airways (BA) is going all out to woo Bangalore-based business houses, IT professionals and travellers to the United Kingdom and Europe who then make their onward journey to the United States.

The airlines, though being a late entrant to Bangalore skies, with the intense competition from others to Europe and US, has hit upon a novel idea of adopting technology and personalised services to gain market share.

BA has adopted technologies like 'printing boarding passes at home', 'making travel E-asy', 'booking on its website (minus the travel agents)', 'e-tickets and manage my booking' and avail British Airways lounges at airports.

"BA has invested significantly in making passenger travel process much easier by embracing the benefits of technology and automating many processes involved in planning, booking, flying and interfacing with the airline," said Robert James Baird, area general manager, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia.

BA had launched its first direct flight from Bangalore to London (Heathrow)on November 8. It will operate five flights a week and plans to increase the frequency to daily flights by summer of 2006.

A business delegation from Bangalore comprising Bhaskar Pramanik, managing director, Sun Microsystems, Pawan Kumar of vMoksha, Hemant Khandeparkar of i-flex Solutions, Pradip K Dutta of Synopsys. Ashok Soota of Mindtree, Sangeeta Singh of Wipro, who boarded the flight later moved on to their onward destinations.

Commenting on the Bangalore-Heathrow direct connectivity, Bhaskar Pramanik said "direct flight helps people going to the US imm-ensely.

A person from Bangalore can leave at 6 am (while for other airlines one has to leave around 2 am) and reach the US in the evening, get rest and attend to work the following day.

According to Alok Sawhney, country commercial manger - India, BA has adopted ambassador concept and an internet check in to avoid passenger rush at the airports.

"The role of the ambassador is to co-ordinate company's travel requirements and sort out the nitty-gritties," he added.