The Met office was founded by the Vice Admiral Fitzroy in 1854. Fitzroy was inspired to build a company, which could predict and transfer weather information to prepare ships for the worst, or to tell them it was going to be smooth sailing. He was inspired by the death of a ship and its crew to a ravage storm out at sea.

The first headquarters was established in London in 1869 to 1910, Fitzroy sadly committed suicide in 1863 and did not get to see his idea expand to such lifesaving points.

The second headquarters was at Dunstable in Bedfordshire operating under the Board of Trade until1962 when they moved to Bracknell operating under the (MOD)RAF.

Their latest move was to Exeter in 2001 operating as a Government Agency, the move had to be spread over 3 years due to the size of the organisation.

How it operates.

The Secretary of State for defence owns the Met office. He is accountable to Parliament for the agency and decides the policy within which the agency operates by setting its objectives and targets. The Met offices main customers are the armed forces, and other core customers are the Civil Aviation Authority and DEFRA. Under government rules these organisations buy their data from the MET office and the MET office has to supply them at an agreed market rate.

Areas of work

The Met office has many sectors of work and these cover the following areas:

• Science (physics & chemistry)
• Geography
• Electronics
• Software engineering
• Trading
• Development
• Communications

The main sectors of engineering in the Met office are Software, telecommunications, and Electronic engineering.

For example the Met office needs different sensors for each type of weather reading, (wind, air pressure, humidity, temperature or rainfall). Because this is a very specialised market area there are not many company’s which could supply the different types of sensors needed, therefore the Met office produces some of its own to the appropriate accuracy. Software is also produced within the Met office. Software is one of the main engineering sectors because it is created to control the electronics through to the sensors; it can receive the information and produce graphs automatically.

Finance and business

The Met office has its own income so that it can prosper but is always under the control of the government who are its owner.

The Met office must finance itself and to do this it uses one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to generate forecasts to customer’s exact requirements. Some examples of its customers are large supermarket chains, airlines, shipping companies and the general public where the service is paid for through the TV license. These are apart from the main core customers mentioned earlier.

A great advantage of the type of business the Met office runs is that it is a specialised area and there is very little competition, but this does not mean it can charge what it wants because it is governed by parliament.

The disadvantage of this type of business is that there has to be a lot of investment in land and equipment to gather the raw data but because the Met office began a long time ago there was a lot of land owned when it was directly under MOD control and the Met office kept it from back when it changed to an agency, so land is not a major problem. The equipment is a bigger problem because of time dating the technology and the Met office has to keep updating to satisfy the accuracy of their readings, but much of the equipment has been kept and is still used today such as in the weather radars, which have hardware from the 1970’s.

Today, through transportation, humans were able to make trade relations with one another. Many business organizations make it a point to travel to different cities and countries to promote their products and services. Traveling and promotion are now part of an organization's strategic management. From this, airlines play a major importance in the success of business organizations around the world. Business organizations are able to widen their market by traveling to different places via the airlines. Their importance leads us to evaluate their strategies in dealing with their business. This paper aims to discuss the strategic management of a specific airline company and assess its effectiveness in the business.

British Airways Airline Company

It has been reported that the British Airways is the largest airline of the United Kingdom and one of the largest in the world, with more flights from Europe across the Atlantic than any other operator ('British Airways' 2006a). British Airways flies to over 550 destinations and to more than 130 countries worldwide, including London, major European centers such as Paris and Frankfurt, and Asian hubs like Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok ('British Airways - Fly to London and the World' 2005). This airline is synonymous with excellent service and quality and has always been regarded as a leader in the airline industry, and serves more than 35 million passengers annually. Its history traces back to 1924 when the five small British independent airlines merged under state guidance to form Imperial Airways. At present, British Airways operates out of London's two main ports, namely Heathrow, which is the world's largest international airport, and Gatwick ('British Airways - Fly to London and the World' 2005).

For its travel classes, the British Airways offers four cabins. The first cabin is complete with fully flat seats, each in its own cocoon-style area with a seat for a companion to join the passenger for meals or for a chat. The second cabin is called the Club World, having flat bed sleeper seats. The third cabin is the World Traveller Plus, a premium economy services, offering more room in-flight and dedicated check-in desks, and the last cabin is the World Traveller, which is the airline's economy, or coach class ('British Airways' 2006c).

Strategy Review of the British Airways

Strategic management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determines the long-run performance of a corporation, and includes aspects such as environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and evaluation and control ('Strategic Management' 2006). Strategic management is important for every business, as it determines its success in the market, in its formulation and implementation of projects. One of the strategies of airlines is alliances or merges. Alliancing in airline industry seems persistent, as every international airline is forging alliances of some form, which can be traced as far back as the 1940s (Vaara, Kleymann and Seristo 2004). From a strategic perspective, airline alliances have become an inherent part of the task environment of airlines (cited in Vaara, Kleymann and Seristo 2004). Alliances are beneficial for airlines in its control and maintenance on the business.

Similarly, this strategy was adopted by the British Airways for better service. On March 31, 1924, Britain's four airlines, namely, Instone, Handley Page, Daimler Airways, and British Air Marine Navigation merged to form Imperial Airways ('British Airways' 2006b). However, during this time a number of smaller UK airline companies had started their operations, so in 1935, these airlines merged to form the original privately owned British Airways Ltd. The British Government in 1939 nationalized the airlines and after the Second World War, the airlines were combined to form the British Airways in 1974 ('British Airways' 2006b). The driving factor behind alliances is long-term profitability, and their formation tends to be for strategic reasons, such as accessing larger markets, establishing global brand loyalty and building hub-to-hub traffic ('Airline Alliances' 1998).

This move is advantageous for the airline to service more passengers and establish market reputation. Alliances or merges are part their strategic management plan, as being part of the strategy formulation and implementation. Strategy formulation and implementation is an on-going, never-ending, integrated process requiring continuous reassessment and reformation, is dynamic, and involves a complex pattern of actions and reactions ('Strategic Management' 2006). Being dynamic, airlines tend to always innovate and improve their actions to further enhance the quality of their service.

In addition, another way for the British Airways to cope with serious competition from other airlines, it continuously provides itself changes and innovation for better services. Strategic management, having its characteristic of being dynamic and complex, enables the British Airways to accommodate change. This change is done by improving the amenities of the airlines and developing new information systems as added services. It remains to be the world's international airline and the first airline to offer jet passenger services, the first to operate weather-beating auto landings, the first to offer supersonic passenger services, and the first in the modern era to offer fully-flat beds ('British Airways' 2006c). Due to the mentioned services, the British Airways were able to build a good reputation in the market and gain the trust of many customers. These has widened their industry and made the airlines to be “the world's most favorite airline”.

Core Business

British Airways is based at London Heathrow Airport in London, England, and has a commanding presence at Gatwick and Manchester International Airport. It has succeeded in dominating Heathrow to the point that the airport is commonly referred to as Fortress Heathrow within both the airline and its competitors ('British Airways' 2006a). It serves flights to destinations in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, India, France, Germany and other major countries around the world.

Currently, British Airways has a modern fleet with an average age of 9.7 years, and consists of Airbus A319-100, A320-100, A320-200, Boeing 737-300, 737-400, 737-500, 747-400, 757-200, 767-300ER, 777-200, and 777-200ER (British Airways 2006b). The type of aircraft, aircraft number, capacity and destinations are shown in the table.

From ('British Airways' 2006a)

Strategic Changes

Demand for air travel has declined since four planes were hijacked and used to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The world's favorite airline, the British Airways, is one of the airlines that have been forced to cut jobs and routes ('What Now for British Airways?' 2001). Due to the incident, more problems bombard the company, such as the global slowdown in the travel industry, the lower demand for bookings, fuel costs rise sharply, insurance costs going up, and higher airport taxes ('What Now for British Airways?' 2001). From these obstacles, the company saw the need for strategic changes in attracting the market.

As a solution to this decline, the airline offered improved amenities, including sleeper seats, in an attempt to lure business travelers at the expense of economy class customers ('Profile: British Airways' 2001). It has unveiled £600 million worth of new customer services and products, which is the biggest investment of its kind in airline history, including flat beds in its "Club World" long haul business cabin. Furthermore, the airline has added legroom in its "World Traveller Plus" section. With this sections, British Airways passengers can now upgrade from traditional economy on extended flights without paying for a Club ticket ('British Airways - Fly to London and the World' 2005).

In addition, due to the arising problems in the company, the president, Bob Ayling attempted to have a merger with American Airlines, but failed due to regulatory problems ('Profile: British Airways' 2001). With this, different presidents of the company did many more attempts to revive its reputation and decreasing performance.

Moreover, in 2005, Cisco Systems and Prime Business Solutions announced a major network convergence project for British Airways to improve its communications for 14,000 offices and airport staffs. This project marks the sale of Cisco's five millionth Internet Protocol (IP) telephone system, which is being developed and implemented by Cisco Gold Certified Partner, Prime, and will be the largest of its kind in the airline industry worldwide ('British Airways Selects Cisco and Prime for Airline Industry's Largest IP Telephone Network' 2005). This improvement in the system of British Airways reduces costs and improves productivity through the integration of all voice and data communications onto a single network. It allows British Airways to remove the cost of inter-office telephone calls and will streamline the management and provisioning of telephony services throughout the company ('British Airways Selects Cisco and Prime for Airline Industry's Largest IP Telephone Network' 2005). Furthermore, the networked capabilities of Cisco's IP phone system will make the relocation of communications services quicker and easier ('British Airways Selects Cisco and Prime for Airline Industry's Largest IP Telephone Network' 2005). With this advantage, British Airways deployed 8,500 Cisco IP phone system to the company, and the project was completed in March 2006 ('British Airways Selects Cisco and Prime for Airline Industry's Largest IP Telephone Network' 2005).

Conclusion

The role of British Airways in the transportation industry is an important factor for many business organizations. With this, it is necessary to conclude that the British Airways continue to improve their innovations and systems as their strategies of developing their company. These are in accordance to their aim of increasing their profit and for rendering better services to their customers. With better services, the company can persist on maintaining their established reputation and image to their market. With their strategies, such as the mergers, and improvement of amenities and services, the company can attract more customers and can guarantee more improved service to many passengers and airline staff. These would not only generate more profit and prestige for the airline company, but would also foster harmony and good working environment for each employee. Continuous innovation and improvement in British Airways can sometimes produce problems, but with good leadership and company maintenance, development can be achieved properly and efficiently.