Captain Corelli - I would wait until BA publishes some transparent accounts before making wild claims that BACE are so much cheaper than BA. The devil is in the detail, and BRAL/Brymon have certainly benefitted from access to expensive BA terminals, ticketing and reservations systems, customer service staff and a full range of operational backup at many BA outstations and hubs. I very much doubt that those companies pay a proportional share of the costs for these. I know for a fact that you don't contribute towards the cost of running that temple of profligacy we call Waterside. You see, you can't have your cake and eat it. If you want access to the BA brand then eventually you have to pay for it or you just shift the costs on to another division in BA. Now that the profitable BAR is under your accounting auspices, there's nowhere to hide those overheads. Furthermore, the suggestion by some that all BAR routes should be handed to BACE is not necessarily based in sound economic sense. After all, much of the transfer of BAR work to BACE has taken place without any business case whatsoever being made for it, there's evidence it may even have cost the company significant sums of money (and I'm talking 8 figure sums here).
Toontartcart - I suspect if we left you all our UK regional services the following would happen. First, much of the airline would grind to a halt as most of the employee commuters would be stranded all over the country. Secondly, the likes of BMI would move into direct competition with us on many routes, sensing an impending victory. Thirdly the vast majority of our passengers would leave for our competitors because they simply don't like flying round on Embraers and Jetstreams. I won't repeat again why they don't like them, but if you ever have the opportunity to ask the check-in staff what the punters think of them you'd understand. It's no good being low cost if you're not selling a product that people want.
Psr777. I don't have the figures to hand but I bet the cost of flight crew at LGW is comparable to Easyjet if not lower in many cases. Furthermore I suspect the same could be said of the junior cabin crew who are paid peanuts. Yes, BA short haul flights are unprofitable partly becuase all the revenue from long haul transfers goes to long haul, but also because of the whopping, non-FlightOps overheads levied on them. Long haul crew may be left alone, but if you think crew costs are whats crippling this company then you have totally missed the point. As for the AML operation, part of the reason for this going was that it was diluting the brand. People paid to travel on BA and were rightly quite angry at being crammed like sardines into a 777 like they were flying charter and experiencing service levels which were not a patch on regular BA services (I think you work for them but I'm afraid that the feedback I've got from everyone I know whos travelled AML is overwhelmingly negative).
[ 10 February 2002: Message edited by: Hand Solo ]</p>