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Hello and welcome to our Monday Briefing for the week beginning 9 July 2018, summarising the main developments in air travel over the past week, and a look to the week ahead.
BA’s “Football’s Coming Home” Boarding Pass
If you were on Twitter and Facebook on Saturday you couldn’t have failed to have noticed BA’s “Football’s Coming Home” boarding pass.
Designed by BA’s ad agency Ogilvy and WaveMaker and carefully navigating FIFA World Cup branding restrictions, it features many references including Gareth Southgate, 1966, 52 Years of Hurt and Wembley. A clever and timely execution of a simple idea.
Pedants will of course note it has been some time since BA last used colour printed boarding passes and a long time ago there were different colour prints depending on class of travel.
On a related note, Ogilvy have only been BA’s main advertising agency until relatively recently and we have yet to see any “Masterbrand” creative work from them, which is awaited with interest.
Heathrow Releases Its Summer Film “Out Of Office”
Heathrow has released a new summer advertising campaign.
Directed by Tom Green of Stink Films, the 40 second advertisement features a mother setting her Out Of Office message whilst her two children play in the departures area before they travel to an unspecified destination.
The airport has previously run “Masterbrand” advertisements at Christmas but this is, we think, its first film of this type for the summer. Like the Christmas ads, it is produced by Havas London.
The TV ad will be supported by an outdoor advertising campaign by renowned portrait photographer Christopher Anderson.
Given how summers used to be at Heathrow ten plus years ago, this is another sign of how much Heathrow has evolved as both an airport and a consumer brand.
The Jumbo Jet: 50 Years In The Sky
There is, by any measure, a lot of competition for viewers’ attention at the moment.
However, if you’re looking for an alternative to the World Cup and Wimbledon, Channel 5 (UK) is looking at the history of the Boeing 747 in a two part series “The Jumbo Jet: 50 Years In The Sky” tonight at 21:00. It will also be available to watch on demand at My5.
There isn’t that much available by way of pre-programme publicity. However, recent Channel 5 documentaries, notably “British Airways: 100 Years In The Sky” have been impressive and belied Channel 5’s reputation.
BA Club World Reviews
Last week we posted three reviews of a return trip on BA Club World.
Here’s our review of London Heathrow – Montréal, Montréal – London Heathrow on the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and the Terminal 5 Arrivals lounge.
A general theme from the new Club World service is the challenge for the airline is achieving consistency in the service format and delivery.
Turning to the arrivals lounge, it is still a very good lounge. However, there are signs that, after ten years of Terminal 5, it is time to rethink the Heathrow lounges in terms of their competitive position at the airport and changing customer needs.
Austrian reshapes its network
Austrian has also announced a significant reshaping of its network at Vienna.
The airline is to suspend flights to Colombo, Havana, Hong Kong, Isfahan, Linz and Shiraz. Miami will also operate on a summer seasonal basis only.
Austrian will also launch a seasonal route to Cape Town and increase frequencies to New York, Chicago, Toronto, Beijing and Shanghai. (Austrian)
And finally
Here are couple of examples of creative work I wanted to share.
The first is time lapse video produced by photographer Mattia Bicchi. This was filmed in the Scottish Highlands last year.
In the era of the smartphone, photography has become heavily commoditised. The level of technical expertise and sheer patience and advance planning that is required to produce high quality photography is heavily underestimated.
Also, as the photo has become almost the first language of the internet, illustration is an art form that is greatly under appreciated. Here is a set of illustrations of “People Who Travel” by Ben the Illustrator.
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