Throughout 2025, we continued to raise colleague awareness of our BA Better World programme; through our role-specific sustainability learning programme, by launching a new ideas platform and tailored communication campaigns, and by both facilitating conversations and listening to feedback.
We know sustainability engagement builds a sense of collective pride and sparks new ideas. It also enables our colleagues to better respond to customer expectations throughout their journey with us, as well as connecting our actions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Our 2025 survey showed 66% of our colleagues are aware of and understand their role in our BA Better World programme. That’s consistent with 2024, and a 31-percentage point increase from our 2021 baseline. We’re aiming for more than 70%, which would mean more than 30,000 colleagues engaged and understand how they can play their part.
Transforming Our Airline
We’re on a journey to a better BA for our people and for our customers, as part of a transformation programme that sees us invest £7bn in three years to revolutionise our business. This includes delivering a world-class customer experience, modernising IT, growing pride among colleagues and focusing on sustainability, as well as driving on-time performance.
We want British Airways to be somewhere our people are proud to work and a company that creates lasting, positive impact. Our BA Better World commitments to People, Planet and Responsible Business continue to feature throughout our transformation programme.
More than 1,200 modernisation initiatives have been rolled out to date, of which 126 were sustainability focused, as we invested in every part of our business. In 2025, 76 new sustainability initiatives were delivered. Examples include:
- Single-use plastic reduction for multiple inflight products including the First-Class Day blanket, catering pots, and hot towels
- Introducing a sustainable aviation fuel* (SAF) purchase scheme for customers to purchase SAF and earn tier points as part of our Club loyalty programme
- Launching Hearlo, a mobile app designed to overcome communication barriers for people with speech or hearing disabilities
- Continuing to expand our range of electric and hybrid vehicles in our ground operations , including switching pieces of equipment to HVO, and replacing diesel-powered aircraft steps and tugs with electric alternatives
£7billion
invested to revolutionise
our business.
Colleague Sustainability Learning Programme
Our sustainability learning programme seeks to inform and inspire colleagues and identify further areas of improvement to help drive change. Through the programme, colleagues can learn about our sustainability goals, what we’re doing and why, and the actions that they can take within their role.
The learning is split into bite-sized modules and tailored to each job role. Progress is tracked on a personal dashboard, so colleagues can learn at their own pace and in any order they want, collecting badges and earning incentives along the way.
Despite the learning programme being voluntary, in 2025, approximately 30% of colleagues have already commenced their sustainability learning journey. Of those that have completed the learning, 92% said that they are motivated to put the sustainability actions they’ve learnt into practice in their role.
Celebrating BA Better World and Recognising Sustainable Impact
When we launched BA Better World in 2021, we said it was our most important journey yet and that remains true today.
We marked our BA Better World four-year anniversary with an all-colleague awareness event hosted by CEO Sean Doyle to recap what’s been achieved but also recognising that we have a long way to go. We also hosted our annual Sustainability Awards to recognise the hard work and achievements of our colleagues from across the business who have delivered so many incredible changes as part of our BA Better World programme. Nine awards were presented including sustainability self-starter, fundraising team of the year, as well as wellbeing and accessibility advocates.
Building Colleague Awareness and Engagement Around Sustainability at all Levels
As part of our vision to build a culture of sustainability, we’re working to weave more sustainable practices throughout our operations and decision making. We see our sustainability commitments as being integral to all British Airways roles, as we believe that all our colleagues can make a positive contribution to people and the planet. And we’re making sustainability a key focus from day one – from integrating sustainability into our new colleague induction programme, through to recurring cabin crew and pilot learning and development.
During 2025, we engaged our colleagues in a variety of ways:
- Continuing to include a climate-related target as part of 10% of our senior colleagues’ remuneration criteria
- Launching our Original Thinkers platform – a new ideas programme open to everyone across British Airways
- Expanding our networks of sustainability champions – with Accessibility, War on Waste, Wildlife, Wellbeing and Flying Start colleague groups, as well as local sustainability networks in locations including Cardiff, Newcastle and New Delhi
- Leveraging and raising awareness of our sustainability dashboard so our colleagues can track our progress towards our People, Planet and Responsible Business commitments any time
- Hosting more than 90 roadshows to raise awareness of our sustainability programme and encourage our colleagues to get involved and take action, including in engineering, at our customer engagement centres, and in our crew areas
- Presenting our strategy and latest developments to our top 200 senior managers in a dedicated session to inspire them to drive change within their teams
- Continuing to focus on reducing emissions generated in our operations – introducing new sustainability delivery manager roles to support our operations, targeting our pilot community, and using key tools such as dashboards to embed sustainability within our colleagues’ business area and day-to-day roles
Recognising Each Other
Our Above & Beyond recognition platform celebrates and appreciates the amazing things our people do every day. In 2025, more than 250,000 moments of recognition were sent by British Airways colleagues through the platform – an increase of almost 45% from 2024.
Our annual Thank You Fest event, celebrates our colleagues that are most frequently recognised for living our values. In 2025, 300 colleagues attended our fourth celebratory event.
7,900 colleagues also celebrated a career milestone, with three colleagues reaching 55 years of service.
Our customers also showed their appreciation to our colleagues for delivering excellent service either on the ground, in the air or over the phone, with more than 61,000 customer compliments being received through ba.com/thankyou
Supporting Communities
- We have more than 5,000 ‘Flying Start’ community champions who are actively involved in community volunteering and fundraising initiatives – from raising money on board through to helping local foodbanks distribute donations
- In 2025, 2,831 colleagues donated to 670 charities, raising more than £942,000 through payroll giving
- Colleagues raised more than £150,000 through fundraising activities – from running marathons to sky diving and holding bake sales
£942000
Raised through colleague payroll giving.
* ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels’ (‘SAF’) are defined in the Refuel EU Aviation Regulation as aviation fuels that are either synthetic aviation fuels, aviation biofuels or recycled carbon aviation fuels. For further information see our Planet page.