Written evidence from British Airways plc

1. Summary

1.1.   Further to my appearance at the Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday 16 December 2015 I was asked to submit a clarifying note on the costs to British Airways in relation to e-borders.

1.2.   Having discussed this with colleagues within British Airways and reviewing old project documentation I would estimate that the direct costs already incurred by British Airways over the past ten years, in relation to e-borders work, amounted to £1.422 million rather than the £1 million approximation I gave on 16 December 2015. 

2.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Detailed breakdown of the cost areas:

2.1.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         British Airways IT and external company design and development costs totalled £985,000.  This included; design workshops with the Semaphore team, e-borders design workshops, the final BA project to design and build a system solution, compliance work required for our franchise partners’ systems, crew system changes, functional changes to our website, and kiosk software changes.

2.2.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Initial data communication costs for passport information (API) transmissions and the creation of a direct data connection with the Semaphore system (VPN), totalled £200,000.  This excludes the ongoing cost of transmitting PNR data.

2.3.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Updating airport equipment to allow for the collection of passport information on all flights, totalled £237,000.  This included; fitting passport readers to the self-service kiosks at Heathrow, and passport readers for check-in desks at selected overseas airports.  It excludes increased cost of any new kiosks purchased or rented at other airports.

3.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        In addition, the need to capture passport information on all our international routes led to a number of business changes for which it is harder to quantify a cost.

3.1.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Training and communication to world-wide airport staff

3.2.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Communication to travel agents on the need to collect passport information and the method of doing so

3.3.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Manual processes to capture and transmit passport information for occasional flights (e.g. charter flights)

3.4.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Communication and enforcement of new processes for customers

3.5.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Impact on customer check-in and boarding times

3.6.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Increased airports charges/rentals due to community hardware being upgraded to capture passport data

3.7.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Ongoing ad-hoc support and monitoring from BA IT and BA management teams.

Michael Cavanagh

Manager Facilitation

5 January 2016