Paxboy is right they were an existying airline and BA at the time made a bold decision to try and compete within Europe and particularly within Germany.
It was a one class operation with fixed ticket prices below the market rate. Had they been an LC operator many of you would praise them (BA) for iniative. Much of it came to grief as the German aviation industry was found to be highly unionised and far less flexible than our UK setup (which was hardly flexible itself).
Many of the negative thread comments are valid though as BA has spent far to much time going off buying / franchising other airlines and making very limited progress at high cost.