Is this the best way forward BA?

[crewmeal]

Seems BA are reconfiguring their Airbus fleet with the result of less legroom for the Business Class traveller. I'm not altogether convinced that this is a good move and may result in Easyjet benefiting from this.

British Airways Confirms Shorthaul Airbus Reconfigurations. | The BA Source (http://www.thebasource.com/british-airways-confirms-shorthaul-airbus-reconfigurations/)

[easyflyer83]

I don't see die hard BA club pax jumping ship to easyjet.

[ExXB]

Do the new seats recline? I personally hope not.

[mixture]

Shorthaul business on any airline is a waste of time and money.

Only reason I ever fly BA short haul business is when I find myself on feeder routes onto long haul business tickets. I'd never just buy a simple short haul business return.

[cjhants]

I flew to FCO and back earlier this month. Walking through club, I was surprised at the lack of leg room. The only benefit I could see on board was the blocked off centre seat and better drinks and food.
I paid £10 eatra each way for an exit row seat and this seemed to offer much more leg room than club. For a 2 hour flight dont see the point of paying all that extra.

[INeedTheFull90]

It's a very competitive market and they're repositioning themselves closer to their main rival on short haul a easyJet. With stealth baggage charges, being crammed in and very basic catering (with no choice and no option to purchase more if one gets hungry), their product is getting closer toward an LCC. Apart from those connecting or with FF cards, BA short haul are facing very stiff competition and some LCCs have a strong following so this will allow BA to remain competitive in the market as competition increases. They're adapting to the market and if they're cramming more seats on then god for them and I hope it works out for them. Flew them short haul a few months back and although the service wasn't fantastic, I felt they provided great value for money but no more so than easyJet or Norwegian.

[Gibon2]

It's a very competitive market and they're repositioning themselves closer to their main rival on short haul a easyJet.

The trouble with this strategy (if it is indeed BA's strategy) is that easyJet is much better at being easyJet than BA can hope to be. Swiss tried a similar manoeuvre in its early days, and it was a miserable failure. By trimming frills, BA will alienate its "die hard club pax", but will not attract easyJet pax unless it can consistently undercut on price and match the keep-it-simple efficiency and service.

[mixture]

no option to purchase more if one gets hungry

:eek:

You mean there is actually someone in the world who wants the option to purchase MORE airline food ?!?

[INeedTheFull90]

I like the have the option. Sorry but LGW-PFO is too long for me to go on a little panini and packet of bird seed. Besides I think some of the food offerings by LCCs are pretty good - easyJet's ham and cheese melt Ryanair's breakfast biscuit and the tapas on Norwegian are pretty good. FR even do chips - what more could you want?

[Metro man]

It looks like they may be going down market like Aer Lingus, to try and compete with the low cost airlines. Few people can justify paying a multiple of the economy fare on a short flight. I took an upgrade offer of BAs on a LHR - ZRH once and was happy enough but would not have paid full price.

I can see the good Club Class confined to a few premium routes which can justify it. Perhaps they should just call it Premium Economy instead.

[INeedTheFull90]

I think the EI route could work out nicely for them to be honest. Give the premiums their seats up front, "2X2" seating, their drinks and snacks included in the price and their avios points. Give the rest of us the option of choosing what we use and what we pay for.

[Heathrow Harry]

Yeah +£800 for a return LHR MAD for a flexible "business class" ticket recently was an eyeopener - it really wasn't worth it

[Hotel Tango]

Business Class fares on short to medium European routes have always been excessive for the product offered. With many businesses tightening their belts these days not many fork out for Business fares. Two short European routes I fly regularly with two different airlines both offer Business Class. 98% of the time that end of the cabin is empty. In many other cases it will be pax feeding onto LH Business Class. Very very few fly Business Class point-to-point on SH European flights.

[ExXB]

But, if you're connecting off of a long haul overnight flight from nowhere, you do want a little TLC on that short connecting flight home. If you look after them on short haul, they will come back for their long haul where the real money is at. You don't? Well there lots of other connecting services and even some nonstop flights too.

[PAXboy]

There is no way of telling if this is the 'right way forward for BA'. In one year's time, they will have some idea but it will be five years before they will really know. Not that they will wait that long before telling the shareholders that it's a success. Pardon the cynicism but I was in corporateland for 25 years.

I have a great deal of sympathy with BA. They are towards the end of their natural lifespan and have to try anything and everything. We have discussed this topic in here before. The number of large corporates that survive beyound 100 years are few. Again (as before) I take no delight in saying that - but it is what happens in human structures.

They are being squeezed by:


90 years of history and corporate weight - which includes the great totem 'we must not sully the brand' (Just ask Coke-A-Cola and how risk averse they are)
30+ years of customer expectation - most of which is built on how things were 30 years ago and cannot be met today at a price people will pay.
Bitten underneath by EZY and all.
Bitten horizontally by KLM, DLH and all.
Bitten by trains and 'why are we travelling at all?'
The continuing recession in the West that has, in my view, at least another five years to run.
<append other items>

[mixture]

Just ask Coke-A-Cola and how risk averse they are

Is this the same risk-averse Coke that's about to put (some of) their mission-critical workloads into the cloud ? :cool:

Risk averse isn't the problem.... the latter half of your post is...


Bitten underneath by EZY and all.
Bitten horizontally by KLM, DLH and all.
Bitten by trains and 'why are we travelling at all?'


Nail.. head. PAXboy has managed to miss his thumb ! ;)

Particularly number three and [insert name of your favoured conferencing platform here]

[PAXboy]

Thanks mixture. With regards to a well known beverage company, I should have specified more clearly that they are risk averse with their brand. After the 'new Coke' debacle, they have not experimented much. They might well be saving cash behind the scenes but the brand has to be kept inviolate.

I agree about tele-conferencing, which I was involved with from the mid-1980s onwards during my time in telecommunications. Folks will recall (and here I risk yet more lambasting) that one of the reasons (please note I say one) of the reasons that Concorde fell out of favour - before it's demise - was the arrival of the laptop computer. If you can work across the Atlantic, you don't need to get there so fast.

Today's 20-somethings have grown up with tele-conferencing. So I repeat that I am sympathetic to the old crowd of carriers but it is a one way street.

[ExXB]

Do the new seats recline? I personally hope not.

Apparently:

Seat recline
Club Europe reduces from 4.5" to 3"
Euro Traveller reduces from 4.5" to 2"

And if the pitch is the same in Club as in the back, this actually makes it worse in the front, when you get reclined into

Boo, Hiss! Why not put in 'no-recline' and keep everybody, except for a few :mad:, happy!

[Hotel Tango]

The thing is, if BA want to go down the RYR route, I might as well fly with RYR
(which would be a first for me), aaaaaagh :eek:

[mixture]

And if the pitch is the same in Club as in the back, this actually makes it worse in the front, when you get reclined into

That's why one sits in 1A old boy. :E

[FlyingEagle21]

After recently traveling on BA in Euro Club and standard economy I was surprised that Club is pretty much just a standard economy seat but with a mediocre salad meal. Nothing I would pay for and certainly not impressed waiting for 40 minutes for my priority bag to come on the arrival belt last after all the standard class.

So they're getting new seats and none have built in IFE? I thought that was a standard for non LCC carriers? I'd certainly expect it.

[ExXB]

With BA, at the end, I always asked them to NOT put a priority tag on my bag, particularly if transiting via LHR.

I suppose the automated systems didn't like those tags. :hmm: My baggage incidents fell to zero.

[edi_local]

I don't think any European carriers, LCC or not, have IFE on the seat backs, certainly not on the usual A320/737 aircraft which are so common. Most of them don't even have overhead screens with a moving map, and even the BA aircraft which have these screens often don't make use of it. I've lost count of the times I've flown BA shorthaul and they have used the screens for a safety briefing and then folded them up for the remainder of the flight!

[Hotel Tango]

With BA, at the end, I always asked them to NOT put a priority tag on my bag

I have started doing that with most carriers now.

[Metro man]

BA are a bit like the London black taxis, offering a good but expensive service whilst their customers desert them for Uber (low cost airlines).

It costs money to maintain standards but only a small percentage of the market is prepared to pay for those standards. Do they try to lower their costs and head down market to compete or maintain their position for those willing to pay extra ?

Premium economy is a good compromise, slightly better leg room and a few frills for a reasonable supplement to the economy fare instead of trying to charge multiple amounts for something few people can justify on a short flight.

[vctenderness]

I'm really surprised that so many contributors here think that the only benefit of buying Club Europe is the seat and a better meal.

The ticket is flexible so ideal for business. Access to the lounge at all airports. Better baggage allowance. Priority check in. Mileage points and route to higher level for card with greater benefits.

I do think it is not always cost effective to pay the higher price for very short routes but on longer sectors it probably is.

[ExXB]

It's not always more expensive. A GVA-LHR-IAD J ticket is almost certainly cheaper than a GVA-IAD J ticket on the non-stop flight. It is also likely cheaper than LHR-IAD J ticket.

[Hotel Tango]

Not all Business Class tickets are fully flexible. For those who are able to book early, some airlines offer Business Basic which, like economy, offers a cheaper fare but with certain restrictions. The point being made, which I think the last two posts are straying away from, is that a full unrestricted C class ticket for SH point-to-point within Europe is certainly not worth the extra expense unless you or your company have money to throw away.

[Ancient Observer]

mixture

1A ?????? Have you taken leave of your senses? It has to be 1C. When I worked for an inter-galactic corporation, (at one time BA's 2nd biggest customer - BA staff were and still are their biggest customer) and had BA and SQ Gold, the only time I missed out on 1C was when some unutterably miserable politician nicked it.

[mixture]

vctenderness,

Access to the lounge at all airports. Better baggage allowance. Priority check in. Mileage points

Nope. Nope. Nope.... and Nope.

Let's go through them one by one shall we.... :cool:

(a) Access to the lounge at all airports

If you're genuinely a business traveller, you'll almost definitely have frequent flyer card. Lounge access is one of the few perks of maintaining "status"... BA give you lounge access at both Silver and Gold tiers.... Silver tier is not hard to reach at all.

(b) Better baggage allowance

If you're a business traveller... who cares... you probably only ever travel with one suitcase.

And same again, you get extra baggage allowance as a frequent flyer perk.


(c) Priority check in

Comes with the card old chap'

(d) Mileage points

Not likely to mean much to a business traveller who has status already.

If you're talking about miles rather than status points, then it means even less....because for business travellers someone else will be picking up the tab, plus they get a bonus on mileage points as a frequent flyer card holder anyway.

[ExXB]

Hotel Tango :ok:

[vctenderness]

Mixture

That makes some huge assumptions! There are many other people who travel in business class than BA card holders.

Lots of reasonably well off folk going on holiday, joining cruise ship, visiting relatives, going to second homes etc. etc. etc.

You also don't just become Silver or Gold card holder you build up to it so don't get those advantages. As you probably well know you can lose your status as well.

So I reiterate my points that Club Europe is more than a seat and a better meal:ok:

[Metro man]

Perhaps BA could go for an auction system like an unnamable Middle East airline for people to upgrade to Club ?

The price difference is very hard to justify for a short, usually day flight with an hour or two time change. I would rather conserve my travel budget and use the savings to upgrade to business class on long haul flights, particularly overnighters.

[mixture]

vctenderness,

So I reiterate my points that Club Europe is more than a seat and a better meal

And I reiterate my point that Club Europe is an utter waste of time and money. :p

Doesn't matter if you're a business traveller or one of your "holiday, joining cruise ship, visiting relatives, going to second homes" brigade.... the only time you should be flying Club Europe is if its a sector that is part of a larger overall ticket that tags onto a long haul Club World sector on the same ticket.

As for the better meal rubbish... save your money and treat yourself to a MUCH better meal at your destination than the revolting muck you'll be served inflight.

[vctenderness]

Just to set the record straight I wasn't saying that it was worth paying for a Club Europe seat just pointing out that is included more than the seat and a meal.

[Jovirunner]

Have to agree re these comments. For short haul I would say much better to pay the small extra charge for the exit seat legroom. Just flew back from Thessaloniki for first time in a while using BA (have used Easyjet in recent years) but as BA flight this time round came up same price opted for that. We had an enormous amount of leg room in Row 12 - more in fact than the Club Euope seats we walked past enroute.