"A principle of the low cost ethos and one which British Airways has now adopted"
Scottie,
BA has been practising Yield Management for a long, long time. You think the LCC invented it? Bob Crandall at AA invented it with a guy called Bob Cross a long time ago. What the LCC have done is basically make it less complicated and make yield management completely demand based i.e. the quicker the flight sells the higher the fare gets. Airlines like AA/BA used to use fare restrictions to segment the market and make businessmen pay very high fares by only allowing lower fares if you stayed over a Saturday night at your destination. They still do this with some fares but a heck of a lot less than they used to thanks to the LCC