Originally Posted by orbitmic

Sorry, I'm just teasing you because you used "guarantee" again (after our previous discussion in the other thread) and that seems to me way too certain.

My position has been quite a cautious one from the side. I think that this is symbolically an important change, and also that cumulatively, it participates in BA's proposition having changed quite significantly in recent months. However, I have also consistently said that in my view, I, we, and even BA themselves do not effectively have the means to double guess what the impact of it will or will not be, nor will it be clear for another couple of years or so as effects will not kick in immediately. To make matters even more unclear, this will be combined with extraordinary uncertainty that will stem from Brexit in terms both of BA's future status and its future competitive context.

I've read many comments that the change will not matter, other airlines do the same and are doing fine and people won't change their habits because of BoB. I've read many other comments that people will desert BA en masse and people will never set foot on a BA plane ever again. Deep inside, I am equally unconvinced by either argument. I think some people will not care or care but not do anything about it, for others it will be a deal breaker on a variety of individual itineraries or general custom, and for others, like me, this will create a partial reaction with a slow erosion of BA loyalty which actual scope will be hard to determine for a while and will also depend on whether competitors continue to improve or not. Meanwhile, as you rightly point out, some other people will come to BA from others for whatever reason.

I think that it is impossible to know how big each of those groups are, nor where they will come from, and what their specific characteristics will be, and that will determine whether the current management's choices end up being a success, a disaster, or something in between.

I have said that my intuition is on the whole negative, but I do not sell it for any more than that: a hesitant intuition. There are only four things that I am pretty sure about:

1) you can't compete with everyone on everything. My first post on the first M&S thread said the following which I would stand by word for word:

"One thing is certain: you cannot be everything at once: my sense is that the move is logical if BA wants to focus on its non-stop operations between London and European markets. It is conversely illogical for a global airline aiming to take a significant share of long haul traffic between European and the rest of the world and vv. Time will tell which side BA's bread is/was really buttered on and my intuitive guess is that they chose the wrong one.";

2) This change will be more noticeable and more symbolically relevant than any recent change implemented by BA in terms of brand perception and reputation. I think that the people who claim that passengers won't notice the move from full service to BoB are plainly wrong. You can make the hypothesis that people will accept or even embrace it and/or that it won't affect many people's behaviour, but the suggestion that it will remain unnoticed or will not affect the perception of the brand is not credible in my view;

3) All airlines which implement changes (positive or negative) do that with expectations regarding how the competition will also change their offer (be it in similar, opposite, or unrelated directions). They never can know but they always try to guess and to an extent always guess wrong. "How" wrong is often a key determinant on whether a proposed chance turns into the modelled expectations or an unforeseen fiasco;

4) I'm absolutely convinced that loyalty matters even in this day and age of "shopping around", and as I said elsewhere, it is an emotional concept as well as a rational one. BA has historically been very good at building loyalty, and my personal sense is that the principal reason why they went through the big crisis of the 2000s in better shape than LH and AF was specifically because they had managed loyalty well ensuring crucial competitive custom at a time when the air market - and notably the crucial competitive sub-part of the premium market (a large part of the premium market is in fact non-competitive but the competitive part is enough to make the difference between losses and profit) was shrinking. In other words, loyalty is what keeps you crucially afloat in times of uncertainty and crisis.

Those four things, I am totally sure about. What it will ultimately mean in terms of the effect of this and other strategic service deterioration, I cannot know for sure and won't pretend to.