Originally Posted by danielbk

Just to clarify, the reason I wrote it is because what I was told irkes them most is no shows, much more than actively cancelling a segment. It's no shows which are then queued to us with the unused coupon in the e-ticket. It wasn't intended to be beyond that. I will heed to your advice though and remain silent in this thread on the subject further.

Originally Posted by Globaliser

Oh, come on. That is taking this too far. You're in the trade; you know exactly what these low fares are about and why BA is selling them.

The people who are tempted to drop the last sector are almost always people to whom these fares are not being marketed by BA. If you're based in the UK, the UK side of ba.com doesn't say "Look at these really competitive fares we have for travel from Oslo!" Fares of that kind are generally marketed to people in Norway, who have every reason to complete the entire trip. BA is not encouraging anyone to drop the last sector; a Norwegian would still have to get home from LON.

What these low fares do is this: to the small part of the UK population which (a) knows about them; and (b) has the spare time to make use of them, they are both attractive and tempting. And the temptation includes using the ticket in a way in which BA did not intend it to be used by dropping the last sector. Fully flying the ticket is something that BA cannot do anything about, but dropping the last sector is something that BA can, even if there are limits to what is practicable.

As this thread shows, we can argue endlessly - and from different perspectives - about who is the cat or the mouse in this game. 'Twas ever thus, as hidden city ticketing and the arguments around it are nothing new. But to suggest that BA itself is the one to blame for the problem simply because it runs promotions in other countries is to ignore the commercial realities of why it does so. The practice is one that all airlines have to adopt in a deregulated market.

As for the revenue which could in theory be made on a sector-by-sector basis if someone no-shows for their final sector, as someone in the trade you also know what this is about: it's not the individual sector revenue that's strategically important, but the market discipline. And once again, we have known for months that the mood music on this was changing - and you are BA's agent, not the passenger's agent.