You cant get away with charging premium fares for a premium service and then trying to skimp up there to save the money. The real things they need to be looking at are the ratios of premium pax, and protecting and differentiating that from rivals.
This analysis is spot on.
I made two return trips to Riyadh recently, from London, with BA, then Swiss and will compare the BA trip to the medium haul legs of the Swiss experience.
Both aircraft cabins were immaculate, the BA NCW seats were in a different league to the Swiss business (on an A330-200, a fleet now being replaced.)
Apart from that, the Swiss experience was better in nearly every respect
- food (BA didn't serve a light meal towards the end of a 6 hour 30 minute sector, Swiss did on a 5 hour sector) Swiss served up very tasty meals, BA's were okay (not bad, but a little tasteless)
- service, after the service, I literally didn't see a crew member for the next 3 hours and had to use the call bell for service, whereas on Swiss, the cabin was continuously and discretely 'patrolled' by a CC member, who didn't disturb you, but was there in a flash if you looked across at them
I would acknowledge that I don't use entertainment systems, so BA's may be better than Swiss's, but it is not an important factor to me.
If I was taking a 10 hour flight, I would choose the BA seat over the Swiss offer, but then again Swiss would be serving up a 340 or 330-300 with flat seats, which woud suit me as well as NCW, as I sleep easily on aircraft and anything remotely flat will do.
In every other respect, I would choose Swiss and especially in the light of BA's track record of threatened industrial action over the past few years.