Originally Posted by
msm2000uk
One small thing to bear in mind.
QR do not particularly care about the BAEC Status of FTers. FTers make up a tiny tiny minority of their passengers.
For the vast majority of J passengers, they will fly however is cheapest. If QR offer a cheap fare, and a superior product to most other airlines in J, then most people will opt for that - and it has been widely accepted that the QR product is better than anything BA can muster.
The R Class fares earn within QRPC, so some people may opt to join just for the sake of it.
In terms of the Connection vs Non-Stop issue, is has been discussed to death, and this is the wrong thread for that.
QR have not created R Class purely to upset FTers and BAEC cardholders. They have created it to increase profitability - in the same way that EK are levying a charge to all of their passengers (and indeed all passengers on all airlines into DXB; EK make up 90% of the traffic).
For those saying they will avoid the R Class fares - Great (for QR). Not receiving TPs will be a relatively minor issue for people who are making a major saving by travelling QR (and for some, it will mean the ability to travel in J opposed to Y)
I would agree with you 100% if QR's service both in the air (J class) and at Doha airport had remained the stellar thing it was 2 years ago. As we unfortunately all know and as QR cabin crews sometimes admit/whisper that they are ashamed of what they offer nowadays, this is not the case.
This (R) Class /Inventory thing is interesting on several points:
1) OW Executives outside QR must be delighted, as part of the perception that the three main ME carriers are sucking their blood away, and as indeed I have frequently flown to SE Asia via Europe, AA/QR or BA/QR or IB/QR at a fraction of the J Transpacific price on AA/CX/JA etc... So, if QR is delighted and other airline executives are delighted, Whoopee.. but one wonders (as Akbar Al Baker said not so long ago) what QR is doing in OW and why it is still there. European and American FFP members are status-obsessed, if only because service to non-elites is so bad.
2) This is very similar to Lufthansa, 3 years ago, creating the "P" Business Class discount fare on LH/LX etc... which gave reduced status and bonus mileage . As the reduced fares previously existed but were not singled out in terms of status/reward, this apparently depleted J cabins so much that it gave LH room to create Premium Economy cabins without touching F and Y spaces. It also caused a hemorragy of MilesandMore customers (me included) which cannot have been good for them.
3) Finally, creating a Premium Economy Class appears not to be in the cards at any of the large ME carriers. They simply do not have the market fine-tuning sophistication to do it.