Actually, that is not so at all for part 2 and I’m not sure what you are referring to: average fares have indeed gone down and so have costs.

This is notably through the significant progress of fuel efficiency of aircrafts, competition between suppliers, improvement to revenue management and load factors, changes to staff/pax ratio, subcontracting of most non flight operations etc.

That said, (and this is not an answer to you, just a general point about the discussion) the ‘fare’ argument invariably made on this forum to justify service cuts is not nearly as obvious as it sounds. It is a ‘notional’ argument (ie the FTers making it assume two things for whatever reason 1) a supposed primacy of the mean over the standard deviation (not sure why) and 2) the role of the airline accountant over that of the airline sales team, marketing team, etc.)

”Fares” mean nothing. On a given flight in ET, mr 15A may have paid £39 for their o/w ticket, Mrs 15B £390 for the exact same, and Miss 15C will be part of a £2950 WT+ return. They will all have to pay for their cup of tea and obviously their reactions to that may differ quite a bit.

as for historical trends, means have gone down, standard deviations (ie variations, segmentations) have gone up. Anyone with an even a passing interest in statistics (and that would indeed include airlines accountants) would likely agree that you never discuss a mean without discussing standard deviation. Yet, that part is never referred to where people refer to the cheap rates, usually alluding to the decreasing entry price levels (full fares are not declining at all).

upthread, I referred to ‘being more royalist than the king’, I think that the fare argument is a point in case. Fares do matter in that discussion, but the way it is approached on FT does not a reflection of how it matters at least not the way most at ba would look into it.

lastly (and again generally), i will reiterate my personal sense that any suspicion that there is a “ba point of view” is almost certainly misconceived. Ba - and all other airlines for that matter - are invariably heavily divided on issues of service standards. Different departments and individuals will have fiercely divergent visions of what the airline positioning to be on a variety of issues and the arguments will be frequent and detailed. Often, the final arbitration on a given decision will be made very marginally and some are reversed or reconsidered whilst others stay. It is a very heterogeneous beast we are talking about, and reducing it to one unanimous machine with a clear agreement on direction (be it to agree with it or to slam it) is, in my view, misplaced.