British Airways - Flight of the Future

British Airways has been a regular in Airline Marketing Monthly this year, thanks to the airline’s on-going centenary celebrations.

The latest centenary project sees BA collaborating with the Royal College of Art in the UK on an exhibition called BA 2119: Flight of the Future. This looks ahead to the next 100 years of flying.

Set to take place at London’s Saatchi Gallery in August, forty postgraduate students from the Royal College of Art have been working on the project to imagine the future of flight in both digital and physical form.

Exploring trends and drivers from research commissioned by British Airways through trends company The Foresight Factory, the students are looking at the future through three lenses; aircraft, experience and people.

Alongside the installations will be a full motion, virtual reality experience charting the history of flying and looking forward to the future for visitors who purchase tickets in advance. Named Fly, it is an interactive, full motion, multisensory experience that traces humankind’s relationship to flying.

Built by award winning VR creators and an Oscar-winning practical effects team, Fly enables visitors to become a time-travelling pilot, from the earliest imaginings of Leonard da Vinci and his ornithopter, to BA’s brand new A350 and the imagined flight of future.

This is once again an impressive (and high budget) piece of activity from British Airways that combines a number of different elements.

The Foresight Factory research will give BA talking points - and media coverage - at a time when aviation and sustainability is very much in the news.

And the exhibition itself, timed with the school holidays, is almost certain to have a large footfall going through it, as The Saatchi Gallery receives 800k visitors a year.