Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
BA will continue their 50 year old mantra "that we lose money on London - Aberdeen" while charging over £ 600 full fare return
Principally because of the way they internally account for the division of costs and revenue within the airline. LHR-JFK sold for £600. ABZ-LHR-JFK sold for £610. Long haul gets the full £600 and domestic gets £10. In some cases domestic connecting pax have contributed £1 to the revenue.
Meanwhile how does BA allocate shared costs ? Per pax, per mile, per £ revenue, or some other way ? How are the BA costs of operating T5 spread - if it's spread by passenger then that is going to inflate domestic costs way up.
Yes, I (or rather my employers) have paid those huge fares for LHR-ABZ. One was significantly more than I'd paid personally a couple of weeks previously on BA to Miami.
Originally Posted by
Epsomdog
maybe they should have been offering last minute point to point tickets at a knock down price? Surely that would have been better than flying empty seats.
Actually it's not. Because pretty rapidly your regulars get to understand this, and don't book standard fare tickets but turn up ticketless when "last minute" bargains are offered. It was one of the things that did in "Standby" cheap transatlantic tickets introduced a generation ago to combat Laker Skytrain. Each month more and more passengers, notably regular business travellers, was found to be diverting to people turning up on the day who understood the likelihood of getting away was good. On the commercial side this is known as "revenue dilution", where low fares offered are taken not by additional passengers but by those who would otherwise have paid higher fares.