BA Hits Privacy Turbulence Over Passenger Profiling

British Airways is facing questions over potential privacy issues, because its staff use the Internet to gather personal information about certain passengers.

Concerns have been raised about BA’s ‘Know Me’ scheme, which the airline uses to essentially create dossiers on certain key passengers.

The airline says the scheme allows it to deliver a more personalised touch by researching passengers before they fly.

BA iPads

The airline aims to send 4,500 “personal recognition messages” a day by the end of this year, it was reported.

Last August, British Airways issued Apple iPads to its cabin crew, in order to replace paper and improve its customer service. But under the ‘Know Me’ scheme, BA staff used their iPads and Google Images to hunt down pictures of passengers and also obtain background information on individuals, such as whether the passenger has previously filed complaints, their travel history amd meal requests.

“Solving problems at the point of failure is a lot more powerful than waiting until after the event. It is more powerful when customers don’t have to repeat their stories to different departments within BA,” BA’s head of revenue and customer analysis, Jo Boswell, was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

Boswell said BA was trying to recreate the “feeling of recognition you get in a favourite restaurant when you’re welcomed there, but in our case it will be delivered by thousands of staff to millions of customers.”

British Airways did not respond to TechWeekEurope’s request for comment at the time of writing.

Privacy concern

But despite BA’s good intentions to provide a better service, the fact that the airline is using this data without first obtaining the passengers’ permission has inspired ire amongst privacy campaigners.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy group the Big Brother Watch, said it was wrong to hunt for passengers’ information on the internet without their permission.

‘Fundamentally British Airways have not asked their passengers’ permission to search Google to find their picture or any other information,” he reportedly said. “For them to do so without express consent may be unlawful under the Data Protection Act.’

“It is clear that the Information Commissioner’s Office needs to defend explicit consent from customers and punish those who obtain data without consent,” the Big Brother Watch said on its website. “The current fine for those found to have unlawfully obtained, disclosed and sold personal data is currently, on average, only £100; clearly not nearly an effective enough deterrent.  Until jail sentences can be handed out to those who deliberately obtain sensitive information that they are not entitled to, the public cannot be sure that their privacy is adequately protected.”

Privacy issues remain a tricky issue for many organisations nowadays. Indeed, Cisco, Facebook and indeed Google have all been mired in privacy rows of late.

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