Will British Airways ever expand?

[Nikki_in_oz]

Hi

Just a query, as an antipodean, who has watched BA from afar.........do any of you think it will ever return to operate to Brisbane, Perth, and Auckland again in its own right?

Having travelled BA Club class from MEL-SIN-LHR-SIN it was a heck of a shock to experience QF from SIN-SYD.

Just wonder if any of you know

Nikki

[HZ123]

It is doubtful for the foreseeable future as it has allowed BA to make significant cost savings. As costs are the core issues for the next few years and it also fulfills a key part of the 'OneWorld' alliance expect little change. However I am surprised that you have found QF a burden.

[Bagso]

you want to live in Manchester, UK mate, second largest city in the UK and one pathetic long haul day......

you think you have problems !

At least your national carrier operates long haul from all the major cities in Australia.

In the UK we prefer to compress everything into Heathrow

...an aircrash waiting to happen if ever there was one !

[Hartington]

I'm not sure where it all went but their latest results say they have increased "capacity" by 4.4% in the past year.

[Hotel Mode]

The oz routes are all down to the Qantas linkup. BA would rather fly the 744's it saves on other routes, and continues to sell seats on the QF flights as now. Auckland is a persistant rumour at Heathrow at the moment though. possibly via LAX.

Re Manchester, BA had a wider longhaul portfolio in the regions a few years ago, but sadly although the flights booked well the local market wouldn't pay the extra to fly direct so couldn't handle the huge costs of a long haul base/moving crews/aircraft around. Its a very different matter to SQ/EK nightstopping aircraft.

Maybe with reduced costs something might happen in a few years

[PH-UKU]

British? Airways ?

Nah - more like Southern English Airways. Done :mad: all for Scotland and North England apart from feed punters into LHR. Oh yes, and swallow up small local operators ... then close them down :mad:

May they rot in hell. I prefer to fly direct or avoid London if I can.

[HZ123]

In addition to my last BA will have a number of new Euro routes this year in Italy and Eastern Europe. There is also a few link ups in North Africa with extensions to the existing routes. It awaits confirmation at this time.

[rutankrd]

BA has a ignoble history of disinterest in regional operations does it not !
As for costs well a long haul base would seem expenive with the double accounting pratises that go on within BA.
Let see now its wonder they still run BA1502 since this is officially a BAcx service isn't it ?
That i'll be a leasing charge from Mainline to BAcx for use of G=BNWH extra charge for back when she goes tech!
Maintenance charges to BACx.
Charges to BAcx as to any franshisee for Ticketing etc....
Allright BAcx might get some group discount plus labour rates are lower but see the point
So external auditors come in to check books HEY gentleman just look at cost of operations at Manchester........
Far to high cut back or simply withdraw !
However lets look at Lufthansa they DO operate their Long Haul services from Munich by mainline admittedly they have equally reduced neh withdrawn LH out of Dusseldorf cept for very lucrative Businees Service over Atlantic that actually takes some high quality high margin traffic from Frankfurt!
As for issues re crew and transfering planes to/from Manchester well just plain C**P.
Main long haul servicing done at CWL so they do move planes around routinely MT.
BA crew don't all live within 20 minutes of Heathrow .
Many cabin actually commute from the NW !
Pilots are among the best paid anywhere and many live in West Country and Oxfordshire so a commute to them is nothing new !
Anyway why can't they recuit Crew in the NW just like everyone else !
Simple they really Don't want to and its NOT just on cost.
As an airline they would much prefer to operate their business based on the 20 odd US cities served everyday with the high margins that are available in the good times so they hurt real bad in the last eighteen months!
They have i believe a very unbalanced network and this goes back to the Lord King days !

[HZ123]

Some of your points are probably correct, however, we have had crew in the NW in the past and I can assure you that it works out far to expensive to base them there and provide the support for such an operation.

I do accept the general consensus that BA appear to have a limited comittment to regional services and it seems to be on the slide. It may be that at some stage in the future we will not have one at all. If you revisit the LGW / CityFlyer and BRAL / MAN regime that seemed to work very well for BA. As many state the current operation is unsatisfactory for BACX and the public.

[hector]

BA have not been interested in Regional Operations since the BEA/BOAC merger in the mid 70's. In those days there were pilot bases in JER, CWL, LBA, NCL, BHX, MAN, GLA, ABZ and probably a couple of other places I've forgotten. Now it's just LHR and LGW and for how much longer LGW!

No wonder it's called "Fortress Heathrow"

[HZ123]

Hector ; But surely the costs of those former operations were financially bearable only during the BEA / BOAC period and if you want to go back futher we had crews in Tangiers. This is all history and has little part to play in the accounts world of today.

Regarding LGW if you consider the distance crew travel to their homes there is little differnce in busing them from LHR as do the crew for GB flying from LHR. You are probably correct in that there is a long term plan to reduce the numbers of resident BA staff. This seems more likely with the rapid increase of EZY on Euro routes.

[hector]

HZ123,
You are right. It is all history now, although I am sure the accounts world of today can be every bit as "creative" as it was then. There were always "suitable" statistics in BA to show how the regions were not really viable, so please excuse a grumpy old cynic having a trip down memory lane.
As for LGW - I was only stirring!

[wawkrk]

Just following up on the comment about Manchester as the UK second city.Quite an interesting list from the audit office.

London 7,074,265
Birmingham 1,020,589
Leeds 726,939
Glasgow 616,430
Sheffield 530,375
Bradford 483,422
Liverpool 467,995
Edinburgh 448,850
Manchester 430,818
Bristol 399,633
Kirklees 388,807
Fife 349,300
Wirral 329,179
Wakefield 317,342
Cardiff 315,040

[TURIN]

Ruten,

Maintenance charges to BACx.

BA mainline engineers, not BACx engineers do ALL the line maintenance at MAN on BA1503 (NWH).


wawkrk,

Is that the average house price then??:E