Originally Posted by
racedo
The low hanging fruit you mention is young people who haven't yet the wealth of the older generation.
Sitting waiting to pick up a friend at Gatwick today i met 2 people travelling to Chicago with Norwegian, both late 20's and neither have ever flown BA with no plans to. 25 years ago the opposite would be the case as would be hard pushed to find people then who hadn't flown BA.
Now people will fly Norwegian / Easyjet / Ryanair because of cost but will stick with it because they are brands they know and have delivered consistently.
In 20 years time the older BA fliers will be dead or stopped flying, the current users of Norwegian (assume still around) will still be flying and have added another generation used to flying Norwegian / Easy / Ryanair. The recession it was people with money who stopped flying and couldn't justify X thousand on a seat.
I agree with many things that you say Racedo, but I disagree strongly in relation to the last point. BA is a well admired brand and have a huge following. I agree that there are enormous swathes of people wanting to fly Norwegian, but it all about price.
BA can command a strong premium in price, whether from corporates who want the scale of network, with aligned frequent flier programmes, or the higher yielding leisure traveller, or indeed the flier who flies on a BA holiday, there is a huge market for BA.
Norwegian is a great airline, and you'd have to admire the scale they have in such a short time. However, they don't have enough of the higher yielding passengers that they need 'all year round', and this is their challenge, I'd say one of their biggest. The winter months are particularly difficult, to a much greater degree than their Long Haul peers. It is also difficult to achieve significant cost advantage in long haul, where you are not getting greater utilisation than your competitors, where you are using primary airports, and where you do not have a well developed corporate customer base.
I wish them well, but I am still struggling to see how their model is sustainable.