Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

British Airways really wants to know you

This is a Marketplace.org Reader

The airline announced yesterday a new program called Know Me, which is designed to feed information about travelers to BA employees. Flight attendants will use the program to search for travel information like meal requests, itineraries, previous complaints, and public domain pictures of passengers, so they can be greeted by name and with a personal touch.

I don’t know… from what I’ve gleaned about flight attendants, most are pretty stressed out, overworked, and tired. Asking them to browse a dossier on future passengers sounds a bit extreme. If BA really wants to make customers happy, how about not making people fly while seated in a matchbook. A little leg room goes a long way.

The Verge reports: “The airline wants to use its new system to personally recognize 4,500 customers per day by the end of the year.” So that’s roughly, roughly, 4,500 people by the end of the year who will be creeped out to hear a flight attendant greet them by name and, maybe comment on a recent Facebook status update?

Latest Episodes

View All Shows
  • Marketplace
    9 hours ago
    26:08
  • Make Me Smart
    9 hours ago
    27:42
  • Marketplace Morning Report
    16 hours ago
    7:08
  • Marketplace Tech
    21 hours ago
    11:03
  • This Is Uncomfortable
    4 days ago
    56:05
  • Million Bazillion
    25 days ago
    32:45