corporate-wage-slave

I'm going to pitch in since it seems to be a "let's beat up Andriyko" thread! Or at least his perfectly reasonable opinions.

I'm mainly affected on the domestic legs since I'm often (but not always) CE thereafter, and on balance I would have preferred that BA not go down this route. I am lucky in that there are very good lounges at the relevant airports. Personally I would have preferred them to have come up with some clever idea - I don't know what it is - which would have been innovative and different to other airlines. Though BA's version of BOB has some interesting touches, basically it's the same as Brussels Airline / Aer Lingus / Vueling.

However, I am certainly less vituperative about this compared to some others in this thread and I think it's not a bad idea to give it a go and see what happens. I have plenty of BA shorthaul bookings coming up, over 100 I would guess, and I can't see that changing.

Incidentally the argument against this I find most persuasive is the one headingwest expressed to me over a coffee (paid for!) in Bratislava: the free offering is part of the "welcome aboard, great to see you" hospitality pitch, which will be difficult to replace or do differently.

So pragmatically I shall watch and see how it works out on the day, I shall give it a go myself, and then reach a considered opinion. The routes to watch are the LHR and LCY routes where there is real competition: FRA, GVA, CDG, EDI, VIE, Italy. I don't quite get this "once gone, the customers won't easily come back" idea, on shorthaul it's so price sensitive that there's nothing that a few weeks of price cutting and rebranding won't solve. And BA have probably the best mailing list in the industry.