British Airways Cabin Crew Is Getting iPhones. Here’s What You Get

15,000 cabin crewmembers for British Airways will soon have new tools to improve the on-board experience. As part of their continued investment plan, the airline will purchase iPhone XR smartphones for every flight attendant, with the goal of offering instant customer assistance via technology.

British Airways wants to improve the customer experience – and is planning to do so by giving every cabin crewmember an iPhone XR. In a press release, the company announced the technology expansion is part of their nearly $8 billion “investment for customers.”

The new deployment comes after running a test with similar hardware among senior flight attendants. Each phone will come pre-loaded with a suite of applications to assist passengers in the skies, including crew reference guides for common situations.

“Our customers spend up to 14 hours with our cabin crew on a single flight,” explains Karen Slinger, head of inflight customer experience at British Airways. “This investment is about further empowering our crew and providing them with everything they need to deliver the very best service to our customers while in the air.”

In addition, the apps will give flight attendants access to customer information. The data goes beyond loyalty status and assigned seat: The cabin crew will also get deeper flyer analytics, including previous flight data and meal preferences. As an example of technology-aided assistance, the phones recently allowed one customer to request a special meal on his return trip from a flight attendant.

“When a customer realized that he had forgotten to order a special meal, he was really impressed when I quickly took out the phone, logged onto ba.com and ordered a meal for his return journey,” Bradley Smith, a flight attendant for British Airways, said in the press release. “It felt so rewarding to be able to immediately resolve the situation for the customer.”

This isn’t the first time an airline used technology to improve customer experience. In 2017, United teamed up with Apple and IBM to use smartphones to help flight attendants increase their level of service in the skies.