British Airways Plc last week held a two-day information technology fair at its Heathrow headquarters in London to try and sell the benefits of the latest technology to its airline managers and staff. Said John Watson, director of information management at British Airways, the group invests UKP200m every year on information technology – more than any of its competitors, and he feels that such investment is invaluable to gain the edge on competitor airlines. But, he points out, the money must be spent wisely – on technology which is of real benefit to the organisation and running of the airline as a public service and to the maintainance of a profitable business. And he pooh-poohs packages that can be bought off the shelf by any of the airline’s competitors. In spring this year, British Airways formed its Speedwing Technologies division to manage the airline’s investment in information technology. One of the branches of this new division is the new Speedwing Logica joint venture with Logica Plc which has developed a ROster ADministration System to handle all roster administrative functions. Some of the areas that British Airways feels it will benefit from computer applications are customer service checking in and so forth, airport scheduling – in bad weather for example, and security – such as customer blacklisting and signature checking. Interactive multimedia developments were among the technologies being displayed at the fair – British Telecom is developing a selection of media services transmitted over its new Integrated Services Digital Network 2, for clerical staff such as airline telesales operators that want to work from home. Telecom was also displaying a prototype of Linitext – a real-time language translator it is developing in liaison with Cambridge University linguists for business letters and so on. Galileo UK was exhibiting its ET3000 personal computer product, aimed at agents that are new to computerised airline reservations and ticketing. Also present were IBM UK displaying its PS/2 MultiMedia products, and Microsoft exhibiting its Windows 3.0 applications.
