As border restrictions are eased worldwide, British Airways has made a series of announcements including the resumption of the legacy carrier’s recruiting process, a new codeshare agreement extension and is even planning to reinstate a route once halted by travel restrictions and the pandemic.

The airline stated that this recruitment process is intended to reinforce its workforce ahead of 2022’s summer peak season and is expected to be concluded by spring of next year. British Airways added that it looking forward to creating “the most diverse crew workforce in its 100-year history” and has even waived its policy around the need to do six months at the airline before accessing staff travel.

The U.K. flag carrier is encouraging people from different fields and backgrounds to apply, however, the airline was also urging former employees to apply for any vacant positions. In a statement, the Chief Executive of British Airways, Sean Doyle the company “is excited to start welcoming brilliant new people and former colleagues back to the BA family.”

British Airways has also announced a brand new codeshare agreement with Kenya Airways. The new agreement will allow many U.K. and African passengers to travel to further destinations in both regions in addition to being able to access the benefits that accompany each airline’s loyalty programmes.

Both airlines are strongly committed to offering an extensive onboard service between London Heathrow to Nairobi. British Airways stated that it will deploy a Boeing 777 in a 4 class configuration which will operate four times per week. While Kenya Airways will offer a daily service to London Heathrow using its Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner which has up to 234 seats in total in a two-class configuration.

In a company press release, BA stated that this agreement will reinforce its presence in central and eastern Africa with the option of 20 other flight connections from Nairobi. Some of these flight connections include services to cities like Douala, Zanzibar, Lusaka, Mombasa, Addis Ababa and Entebbe, as well as other popular leisure destinations like Mauritius and Seychelles.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s flag carrier will be able to benefit from a total of 26 onward connections through its flights to London. These include not only services throughout the United Kingdom to cities such as Glasgow, but also to mainland European hubs such as Madrid, Milan, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Representatives from both airlines praised the agreement after 20 months with global travel restrictions. Chief Commercial and Customer Officer at Kenya Airways, Julius Thairu stressed that “this agreement will provide benefits to aid the recovery of international travel and meet the increasing demand.”

In a company statement, the Head of Alliances at British Airways, Christopher Fordyce said that the airline is “really pleased to be able to offer our customers access to even more destinations across the region thanks to our new codeshare agreement with Kenya Airways, making that bucket list trip even easier to plan.”

In addition to announcing a new codeshare agreement, British Airways is preparing to make a special comeback to the United States. The U.K flag carrier has revealed that is planning to operate a special scheduled flight to New York’s JFK Airport. The flight which is scheduled for November 8th will coincide with the lifting of travel restrictions to the United States which was recently announced by the Biden administration.

British Airways stated that it is planning on using an Airbus A350-1000 for this service which offers a total of 331 seats in a 3 class configuration. The flight is scheduled to depart London Heathrow (LHR) at 8:30 am local time and will be given the unique flight number: BA1.

This number is usually destined for iconic flights, such as the London Heathrow to New York JFK route that was once served by Concorde which was halted in 2003. More recently, the BA flight number was used on the well-known London City (LCY) to New York (JFK) service which was operated by an all-business-class Airbus A318 aircraft. This particular route came to an end in 2020 mainly due to the effects of the pandemic, while the Airbus A318-100 aircraft has since been removed from BA’s fleet and broken up.

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