British Airways sets up tech innovation unit

British Airways (BA) has set up a special innovation unit to explore ways the airline can use web 2.0, shareware and open source technologies.

The unit has a core of around 10 people from the IT and commercial departments, which will run small-scale trials of new technology.

BA's CIO Paul Coby said the real-time and mission-critical nature of internet-based systems meant it was getting more difficult to introduce new innovations because of the risk.

He told silicon.com: "We are trying to get back to the heroic days of web development when you could try things."

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One of the first things to come out of the innovation unit is the introduction of Google gadgets on the ba.com website. The gadgets include information such as arrivals and departures, special offers and timetables and people can add them to their personalised iGoogle homepage.

Coby said: "We have put it quietly live on the website - a sort of beta version - and it is getting 120 downloads a day."

The unit's remit also includes open source and a new portal will go live on the BA staff intranet in January based on free open source software called Liferay.

Coby said: "We are looking at open source. We looked at the big heavy duty stuff from the likes of BEA which costs you a big licence and support fee but this does everything you want."

The Employee Self Service BA staff intranet is also trialling social networking between employees on travel tips, which Coby said could eventually be extended externally to customers if successful.

Another initiative that has already come out of the innovation unit is a trial at Dusseldorf Airport in Germany replacing the BA self-service check-in kiosks with PCs and printers.

Coby admitted the concept would not work everywhere but said: "Those big heavy kiosks are quite expensive bespoke machines so why don't we just put some PCs in? Then you can do all those other things you can do online."