Always beena loyal BA customer for various reasons and for the logical one that is till have alot of airmiles accrued during my career. But having had the opportunity to compare BA and EZ with flights a couple of months apart I cannot see any reason to choose BA ove Ez especially as Ez 'Up front ' product is musch the same as BA Club europe except for the food .
However there are two reasons which apply to me and I suspect a lot of others which will help keep BA afloat .
1 Exec Club-- Lots of business travellers like this because it gives them a chance to take partner or family at free of subsidised cost to make up for all the time away from home. The other side of the coin applies to me which is that three years after retiring Is till have 500K avios to use up.
2 LHR, LHR sits at the centre of probably the most prosperous area of UK -West end of London and suburbs like Richmond , Wimbledon etc and then the area between the M3 and M40 , which has many high disposable income towns . For many people in those areas Gatwick or Luton, let alone STN are just too diffilcult to get too and much more expensive in terms of a cab ride.
For me LHR especially T5 is about 20 miles away, with multiple road routes not just the M3 and M25, but LGW is over 50 miles away much of that on the M25
So while BAs standards have dropped alarmingly under Cruz and will continue to do so while he is there since he knows only one way to manage-cut costs., Avios and access make BA a good choice for lots and lots of people even isf they might be 50-100 more per ticket.
Just extending this abit further I wonder how the choice of airline for people in London and its envrins , say up to 40 miles radius is really dictated by where you live when it comes to European travel . I have sketched out the area where LHR is easily to best choice and surely this is true for the others. Live in Brighton why go to LHR , Essex and Suffolk why choose anywhere than STN etc .talking to people on a recent holiday many had chosen Ezy over BA simply because Luton was so much more accessible than LHR if you live in say Bedford or N Herts