The way the fare basis came up, "TLXSALE8", me thinks this was an intentional event on BA's part. If most of the people who grabbed the fare are frequent travellers, and 15% of the 1,000 book a future regular fare on BA, they probably have no trouble covering their fixed costs of 1,000 tickets.

My guess is the booking engines get $10, so BA made $10 on each ticket. What could the incremental cost of carrying a passenger over the Pond in WT+ cost plus onward to the Continent, maybe $65? If 150 of the 1,000 people book a new pre-tax fare of $700 in the next year their gross revenue would be $105,000. Using my cost guesses, they would spend $55 times 1,000 people on this promo. I suspect 15% of the "winners" will be pleased enough with BA's generosity and service, to give them a new future booking as I describe.

The press will likely give BA all kinds of good (read: free) publicity. The negative stuff that we are seeing people post about, seems to be the fault of the booking engines.

Of course, I could be dead wrong



[This message has been edited by Craig6z (edited 11-30-2002).]