Independent student research project — not affiliated with or endorsed by British Airways.
British Airways Usability Research
Summary
80%
Of failed tasks came with full confidence
6
Usability sessions
3
Tasks
Identify friction points in the add-on and upgrade steps of British Airways' long-haul booking flow and recommend ways to increase clarity and upgrade conversion, since BA's transformation strategy leans heavily on those add-ons. As the sole researcher, I built a competitive analysis against easyJet, KLM, and United, then ran 6 usability sessions across 3 tasks using a mix of self-recruited, Userbrain, and moderated UserInterviews participants. The booking flow itself felt safe and premium, but participants kept skipping the exact moments where BA makes its upsell, and 80% of participants who failed a task still felt fully confident in their choice. That gap between confidence and success became the through-line of the report and led to three prioritized recommendations, including one quick, low-effort win BA could act on almost immediately.
Research Report
Background
British Airways is the UK's flag carrier, and they are currently in a transformational period. Their strategy leans on increasing add-ons and upgrades while retaining the strong brand presence they already have, so the goal of my research was never to fix a broken product; it was to find where clarity could grow revenue. Specifically, I set out to identify friction points in the key add-on and upgrade steps for long-haul flyers and give recommendations that could increase clarity and upgrade conversion.
To start, I needed to understand BA as a business, so I built a business model canvas from secondary research, then ran a competitive analysis against easyJet as the strong regional competitor, KLM as the closest experience to BA's, and United as the aspirational competitor. From there, hierarchical and cognitive task analysis helped me identify the red routes: searching for flights, choosing flights, and adding extras were the mandatory or near-mandatory steps every user passes through, and they doubled as BA's key upsell moments. That overlap is what the whole study hangs on.
Methodology
Recruiting was one of the harder portions of this project. I was unable to self-recruit moderated participants, so I went with my Plan B, UserInterviews, and I ended up learning both Userbrain and UserInterviews platforms during this research. In the end, I ran 6 usability sessions across 3 tasks: two unmoderated self-recruited sessions (note: one participant's last long-haul booking was 3 years ago, one more than my desired segment, but they met all the other criteria), two unmoderated Userbrain sessions, and two moderated sessions through UserInterviews. The pilot test exposed a gap of my own along the way. I struggled to moderate, take notes, and remember everything at once, so I modified my script to carry everything I would need to remember and started short-handing in my daily life for practice.
One more thing worth saying up front: a lot went right for BA. Participants completed their bookings no matter the hiccups; they felt confident in their choices, and the site's visual fidelity reads as premium next to competitor sites. The problems below are not about a product falling apart; they are about money being left on the table.
Problem #1 · Landing Page: What's a Travel Class?
The travel class field on the landing page is one of BA's first upsell moments, and it autofills to Economy with no signal that a choice has already been made for you. 4 of 6 participants skipped the field and never evaluated a fare upgrade. The upgrade fares do show up on the next screen, but since Economy was already selected, most participants moved past them without comparing.
What made this one sting was that the intent to upgrade was actually there. The willingness existed; the field just never asked.
“It's a long flight, it'd be quite expensive. I'll go, not the lowest, I'll go premium Economy.”
— Participant 3
Recommendation
I recommend increasing awareness of the travel class field on the landing page so users compare fares before a default is locked in. With high frequency, high severity, and low effort, this was the quickest win in the whole report.
Problem #2 · Booking: The Hunt for Information
While booking their flights, participants spent more time searching for information than evaluating their options. Only 1 of 5 completed the outbound booking in under 45 seconds, with the average sitting at 72, and most of that extra time was spent hunting for details they expected to be presented up front.
“What is the difference between premium Economy and business? I'm not sure what kind of option they're adding if I choose business class over Economy.”
— Participant 4
Recommendation
I recommended simplifying the booking page so key information is surfaced immediately instead of buried. Competitors like KLM have easier-to-scan tier cards with clearer taxonomies, and BA should consider following similar best practices with its own tier cards. A quicker booking experience means less friction in long-haul bookings, which is exactly where BA wants the upgrades to happen.
Problem #3 · Extras: Time to Leave
The Extras step is where BA sells baggage, and the baggage terminology there was not standardized. The information shown also changes depending on the flights chosen, so participants were comparing "2 pieces of hand baggage" on one leg against "1 small handbag" and "1 cabin bag" on another, with no definitions in sight.
2 of 4 participants left the page entirely to search for clarification, and leaving the booking flow risks abandonment.
“It tells me that I have two check bags, a small handbag, a cabin bag, and two pieces of hand bags. Which I have no idea what the difference between [1 small handbag and 1 cabin bag] and [2 pieces of hand baggages] is.”
— Participant 5
Recommendation
My recommendation was to keep the explanatory information on the page and standardize the add-on baggage verbiage. Keeping users in the flow means fewer exits from the Extras page and a higher baggage add-on rate, which feeds directly into BA's goal of increasing paid add-ons.
The thread: an 80% confidence gap
Individually, these three findings could read as small polish items. The pattern underneath them is what I think matters most: across all tasks, 80% of participants who failed a task were confident in their choices. High false confidence creates silent failures. Users believe they've made the best choice when they've really just accepted the default, and because nobody feels lost, nothing ever signals a problem to the user or to BA. That is likely suppressing upgrade conversions in a way no complaint ticket will ever surface, and it reframed the work for me: the fixes aren't about rescuing struggling users; they're about interrupting comfortable ones.
80%
of failed tasks came with full confidence
What's Next
The final report gave British Airways a sequenced path rather than a wish list: raise travel class awareness first (the quickest win), simplify the booking page's information presentation second, and standardize the Extras verbiage third. For BA, the forward-looking move is to treat the quickest win as a hypothesis, ship the landing page change, then measure whether fare comparisons and upgrade conversion actually move. I'd also want a follow-up round of usability testing after any changes, since with 6 usability sessions across 3 tasks I was able to find the friction but not measure the fix at scale.
After presenting, I applied all of my professor's critique feedback and corrected those portions of the deck, and the revised deck is now available here on my portfolio and LinkedIn. On a personal level, this project taught me recruiting, moderation, and two testing platforms I had never touched before, and it taught me to schedule breaks when two research timelines collide. Not every step went smoothly, but I'm more confident in running research end to end, which was the point of the feasibility exercise.