Air fares

[Brian H]

I have just been looking at the cost of flights from Newcastle to Brussels in May next year. SN Brussels Airlines operate a direct flight. which is a code share with British Airways. SN Brussels Airlines quoted £161.80 return for my wife and I,out of interest I looked on the British Airways web site to see what they would quote for this flight and they quoted £438.90 return. How can BA justify such a huge difference.

[Globaliser]

How can BA justify such a huge difference.I'm not sure that there's any need for BA to "justify" it - everyone has a choice whether or not to pay the higher fare.

From a quick search, it looks like BA only sells tickets in the higher (more expensive) booking classes on this route. This could be because any of a number of factors, including that maybe for commercial reasons BA only wants customers who wish to book in the higher classes, or maybe the codeshare relationship only allows BA to sell tickets in those booking classes.

[Brian H]

Fare quoted by both SN Brussels and British Airways, was their lowest ecconomy fare. On the same aircraft in the cabin with the same level of service, the only difference was the price.

[PAXboy]

Brian Hthe only difference was the price.It is possible that there was also a difference in Booking Class. That is what says if you can cancel, rebook or do anything other than use or throw away.

[Globaliser]

On the same aircraft in the cabin with the same level of service, the only difference was the price.Even within the same cabin, the airline may sell tickets from a number of booking classes.

For example, using a multi-airline search tool on random dates, I can find a £177.70 return fare on SN, which is booked in V class outbound and Q class inbound. Although airlines are different from each other, these are typically used for the cheaper fares.

On different flights on the same dates, I can find a £232.70 return fare on SN, which is V class outbound and K class inbound. (In fact, it's the same outbound flight, but the other inbound flight on the return travel date.) Although it's still for the same cabin (economy), and it's the lowest economy fare available on those particular flights, the price difference is entirely due to the change in booking class which means that the return flight has to be priced with a more expensive K class fare rather than the Q class fare for the other inbound flight.

The lowest BA return fare for those dates, though, is £438.90 (as you found). This is because it's an H class fare in both directions. H class is BA's third highest economy booking class (the two higher ones are Y and B). So it looks like BA is not showing any availability for its lower booking classes on these flights.

Indeed, a quick look at the BA website suggests that it never has any availability in any class lower than H on the NCL-BRU route. This is why I made the suggestions that I did about why BA doesn't do this.