orbitmic

PS: I could only comment on the impact of BoB on my own travel earlier as I do not have any indication to suggest whether it has been a 'success' or 'failure' from BA's point of view nor, I believe, does anybody else here.

If I were to move away from my usual caution on this to embrace complete speculation, I would guess that in all likelihood, it has not been either a great success or a great failure. If it had been a great failure, they would have presumably reversed it by now as they are for the CE catering changes. Conversely, if it has been a clear success, their two major competitors - AF and LH - would have undoubtedly embraced the model and both have so far stayed well clear off it. Compare and contrast with - for instance - hand baggage only fares which AF introduced a while ago and which both BA and LH copied when they considered it was a success.

Maybe the most likely scenario from that point of view is that it has little impact on point to point pax' attitudes and some negative on long haul connecting ones to the extent that BA faces more aggressive point to point competition from its two main competitors and conversely, LH chose to protect service on its mainline services whilst devolving point to point ones to a low cost subsidiary (and AF has chosen to remain full service altogether). As I said though, the above is complete speculation, but I know for a fact that the outcome of the BA experiment was watched very closely by AF and I am rather confident that if AF had concluded that it had been successful, there would be no free food and drink in Y on AF intra-Europe by now.