Global aviation industry’s supply side challenges will start easing from 2024, says British Airways CEO

Supply side issues in the global aviation industry will likely start evening out from 2024, British Airways CEO Sean Doyle has said.

“The supply chains aren’t what they were. We need to keep the pressure on our suppliers to ensure they keep improving. If you talk to anybody in the industry, there’s a constraint. The production of aircraft is not back to the pre-pandemic levels at the Big Two (Airbus and Boeing),” observed Doyle while addressing mediapersons in New Delhi Friday.

The Covid-19-induced lockdowns followed by the Russian military action in Ukraine and the return of demand for air travel had all resulted in shortages of aircraft, engines and components the world over.

Doyle was, however, confident that aircraft production would gradually be getting back to scale.

“There has been a broader supply chain disruption as economies have recovered in various places at different paces. We haven’t seen the global supply chain function as optimally as during pre-pandemic,” said Doyle.

He added that although that had made things highly challenging for everyone, the aviation industry was very resilient and would be able to find its way through the situation.

“This (2023) is the transition year to rebuild. The next year I hope those supply chain issues will be balancing [themselves] out,” he declared.

British Airways has a healthy order book and will be taking the delivery of its newest A350-1000 aircraft in the next couple of weeks.

Doyle was in India to unveil the new CallBA call centre in Gurugram near Delhi on June 29.

Staffed by 1,400 people, the facility will offer round-the-clock support to the airline’s customers from the US and Europe, through to Asia-Pacific.

The Harmondsworth (UK)-based carrier commenced operations in India in 1924. The airline currently operates 56 weekly flights to the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, with the number of connections now exceeding the pre-pandemic level.