BA Connect is going to lose an awful lot of the revenue that it currently enjoys from business passengers
They have definately done their homework on this one and it has been shown, repeatedly, that business travellers usually book fairly close to the last minute, which makes us just as competitive as the low-cost carriers, if not better. There have been times when I thought booking with FlyBE would be cheaper than us (before staff travel came in) and guess what....it wasn't. And we were still a full service airline at this point.
What about changing bookings? From the BMIBaby website: "There is a fee for each change made to a booking, and also a possible fare increase that will also need to be paid". From the BA Connect press realease: "Changes to tickets will incur a competitive £30 administration fee per transaction, with the exception of the highest level, refunable 'BA Connect Plus fare' which will be exempt from administration fees for changes". From personal experience again, I've been almost bankrupted trying to get my tickets changed with a certain low-cost carrier. Considering that most of our customers are business travellers, and the tickets are booked by the companies they work for, which 'perk' would the company's bean counters prefer?
From personal choice, I'd rather be in a baby 737 than crushed into an ERJ
Fair enough, the aircraft we operate aren't the best suited anymore, however I've heard about plans for Emirates Express, an A380 with one class all the way through - about 880 people. It doesn't matter how big or small the aircraft is, your gonna get crushed into an aeroplane.
End of rant!!
