Hand Solo
Oh dear. I'm afraid your reply just typifies all that is wrong with BA from the customers point of view. Suggest you read a post properly before adopting the BA party line. As to your points
"The cabin gets crowded, it becomes more time consuming and stressful to embark/disembark our already peeved premium pax. "
Isn't your aim to fill up the cabin anyway?
"The overhead lockers fill up with the wheelie bags of the upgrades, which means less space for our most profitable customers to store their bags on board, they may even have to go into the hold"
Ditto, plus we're passengers too, not 'upgrades'. And I don't have a 'wheelie bag'.
"The catering cost goes up, or you have to give the upgrades economy food, thus alerting everyone to the fact that 60% of the cabin are on a free upgrade."
Fair point. But are 60% really on an upgrade?
"The crew bill goes up as you have to add additional cabin crew to cope with the increased service demand, which means you get delayed whilst you wait for the extra crew member(s) to get to the aircraft, or you go a crew member short and reduce the service levels. "
Could be valid but never been delayed like that yet that I know of
"Everyone wants to get in the Executive Lounge which fills up and deprives premium pax of a place to sit. "
Never been near the place. Too busy myself. But again, if your aim is to fill the cabin with premium pax, surely the Executive Lounge would get full too?
"Contrary to popular belief, upgrading is not a zero cost item. It can have a real impact in terms of crewing costs (yes, just one more pax can mean one more crew member) and it dilutes the premium brand and service which is our bread and butter, and which our most important customers have come to expect. We are acutely aware of who our biggest customers are, and they benefit from their loyalty to BA not by the occasional random upgrade but by a regular hefty refund on their travel costs. A regular, predictable and reliable bonus which our most regular corporate customers are happy to accept. "
Didn't say it was a zero cost item. I actually said I didn't think it cost a lot. If you look at the cost of say, giving paolo an upgrade to Prague, versus him using another carrier now and (say he liked it - not everyone thinks BA service is the best in the world - in the future), thus depriving BA of his future revenue, the cost of that upgrade doesn't seem so huge.
"Upgrading does take place reasonably regularly when there's good commercial reason, but for every 'good reason' pax there are at least ten more trying it on. Good reasons do not include "I bought a cheap ticket and was inconvenienced by air traffic control delays" or "upgrade me and maybe I might fly with your company more often"!"
Well, the "upgrade me and maybe I might fly with your company more often" argument goes down well here. And it operates in practice. In my team we've done 8 transatlantic flights in the last few months alone. All with the same airline. Small beer maybe but that's 8 lots of revenue that BA didn't get!. Multiply that by all the other companies following suit and you might make at least a dent in that £200 million!!
Oh and St Crispin, we neither "CONSTANTLY" nor "demand" upgrades. We ask politely and are grateful when we get them. We are in their ff programme and we are loyal to that carrier!