Ahah, well, believe it or not, I have friends, family and co-workers who fly once or twice a year too. While I would never interpret the behaviour of a few people as evidence of the vast majority, I certainly do not read their anecdotal behaviour the same way as yours, and indeed, I find many an occasional flyer typically choosing the legacy carrier over the low cost one when the legacy carrier costs £48 and the low cost £41 even when I precisely point out to them that I would go U2 myself. Maybe that is due to some assumptions about causality that you seem to make here? For example:

Quote:

Originally Posted by bisonrav

go out and ask if people would prefer a lower fare or a bag of pretzels and a drink and you'll probably be surprised that pretzels score quite low.

This is of course an extremely leading question, and simply not the way the choices are set in real life. BoB was never about transferring saved costs to the passengers, in fact, BA management was always very clear and honest about that (unlike the HBO model were that claim was made).

First, 80% of human decision is subconscious so you'd never evaluate response to BoB by that sort of question (even without a misleading phrasing) alone; you'd never ever ask a tension scale question by opposing a precise quantity to an imprecise one, and as mentioned, this is not the question that we are considering here (BA is not cheaper than AF or LH and IB is not cheaper than IB by the cost of a "bag of pretzel and a drink"). In fact, it is not even true within BA itself (again, not only have flights on my main routes not reduced, but for what it's worth, on my no1 route, flights to/from LCY - which include free F&B are actually cheaper than flights to/from LHR - which do not - if more expensive than ex-LGW, which do not either).

Having ignored all that, we reach the most important aconsequence of what you say, which is that ultimately, if people decide on cost alone, then BA can NOT compete and certainly is not competing well with low cost airlines. Despite what you say, BA are significantly more expensive than LCCs on the whole. In fact, I suppose you know that because you keep saying that they are not "if you compare like for like" which precisely contradicts the notion that they are cheaper and suggest that to see them as such, you need to start including services or frills that low cost airlines do not include for free?

We can "prove" the worthlessness of any aspect of what makes legacy carriers one by one by using the same individual and leading questions as you do above. So for instance:

- "Would you prefer to pay a lower fare or that the airline charges you more to give free champagne and snacks to their frequent flyers in luxury lounges or get separate check in with no queue?". And we are done with lounge access and other FFP status benefits. They do not come free.
- "Would you prefer to pay a lower fare or to get 125 miles which mean that if you take 60 flights you will then get one free as long as you pay the taxes and there is availability?". And done we are with the FFP. Those things cost a fortune to airlines in liability anyway. Gone.
- "Would you prefer to pay a lower fare or to get to pay £20 more to arrive at an airport located 15 minutes closer to the city centre?" And away with Heathrow, one of the most expensive and ill equipped hubs to operate from.
- End of WW and EF crew all replaced by Mixed Fleet which is supposedly the only one BA can compete with.
- Stop protecting flights on 'complex itineraries from OTP', do what the low cost do and only sell single segments where people assume the risk to avoid a significant part of your right of care and rerouting expenses.

and quite a few more.

Legacy carriers (BA included) cannot compete on cost alone. That is a bare fact. Their entire structure of operation is more expensive and that means that somehow they have three options: 1) fly different routes and customers (see below), 2) be more expensive and hope that people still book them based on inertia or prejudice alone, 3) be more expensive and retain some specific benefits which they hope will retain them some custom for a given price difference (in which case, a sense of hospitality based on free F&B is neither more nor less absurd than some of the ones that they are keeping now.



Is it? How about the fact that looking at the last full year available, KL, AF, and LH have been running with even more increased load factors, which happen to be a lot higher than BA's? KL load factor: 88.4% (+1.5), AF: 85.4% (+1.3), LH: 81.6%, LX: 81.5%, BA: 81.2% (note that interestingly, BE which is BoB is bottom of the list. Also you are talking about load factors being up, but the 81.2% load factor of BA in 2017 is in fact only 0.2% up from 2014 (81%) and that load factor for European flights is lower than their average. Note that I don't care about load factors myself but you were the one introducing it.

As for the report, nobody is denying that low cost carriers have become major players on the European scene and that there is a market for them, but that is no reason to over-simplify their success. I suspect I fly U2 and DY more than most people on this forum so I might know one or two things about what makes them attractive. The first thing is that they fly routes that no one else does, and the report you quote analyses that well in terms of increase in routes offering. This is also why their biggest growth as been in the business segment. Are you suggesting that people choose U2 over AF or AZ to fly NCE-VCE or over LX and BA to fly GVA-BUD because they prefer to pay for water rather than because they prefer to fly direct in one hour than via CDG or FCO?

Also note that the market shares you mention relate to overall share of the intra-EU market and not overall pax numbers as discussed. I can only mention the importance of connecting traffic who represent a majority of passengers on European flights for BA (at least on LHR flights) so many times though you can, of course, continue to ignore it for as long as you wish.

PS: In terms of your answer to my counter-factual questions, I am missing the logic of your AF-KL answer. You invest a lot of time and energy in arguing that BoB is what people want, but you then say that AF and KL don't use it because they are in crisis and don't want to "rock the boat". Surely, if that is what the people want and they are in crisis that should be even more of a reason for them to introduce this urgently? As for the notion that Germany is just a more conservative country, I'll admit that I am just jealous of whatever means you've found to block the sounds of Mr Rees-Mogg, blue passports, and references to the good old days but let me not get OT


One thing that I fully agree with you with is that low cost airlines represent a major challenge to European legacy carriers. What I think, however, is that what makes this really interesting is that this is not the only one. European legacy carriers are in fact embroiled in a triple competitive threat:

- from one another - that is the "classic" scenario of BA, LH, AF, and friends all fighting for the same passengers to a large extent and it is not going away;
- from low cost airlines - indeed, a major threat notably on point to point European traffic from their hubs and now increasingly on the - so far more protected - long haul network. The short haul thread is the 1990s one and now largely mature, the long haul one is the 2010s one and the newest of all;
- from ME3 and other major new international competitors. That may be the 2000s threat but has again matured in the meantime, and in many ways, EK, for instance has some of the same argument (in terms of an incredibly dense European network) for long haul to the South and East and low cost airlines to the West.

That means that European airlines can't afford to think of their competitive environment as unidimensional (as it would be if it was only about low cost airlines competing on fares on European point to point) but have to compete simultaneously on cost and quality, on p2p passengers and on connecting ones, on domestic market and on both European and international ones.

I think that this is what makes the race so interesting but also so complex, and I suggest that any hope for a quick fix or obvious solutions, however embraced by any flyertalker, are actually not anything that airline leaders themselves would share so enthusiastically. In fact, in the secrecy of IAG meetings, I suspect that AC and WW are a lot less reassured and 'happy' about the situation than you are on their behalf and are still wondering which part of their current would map to navigate such a narrow straight will and will not prove right.