Originally Posted by
1Aturnleft
It probably includes convenience and personal preference too, not just the ticket cost.
Yes, of course, there are always multiple factors in choosing an airline. But my point is hard product is one of them, and I find BA's bad enough that I would pay more (or choose a worse departure time or suffer some other disadvantage) to avoid it, compared to something like what AC or VS had. And I did frequently make purchasing decisions for both personal and business travel where BA's hard product was a meaningful component of my decision not to fly them. And that includes times when I was already well past qualification for AC's top-tier status for the year and FFP was not a big concern (and I've also flown BA enough that I've had status with them since 2015, although never anywhere near Gold).
AC started rolling out the XM project mid 2006 with something very similar to what Virgin were offering at the time.
I could have sworn it was a year or two earlier, but I haven't gone back to try to figure that out, so I'll defer to you on that one
AC had the foresight to revolutionise in its next revamp where as BA figured all it needed to do was refresh the bones of what it already had. No other airline would have wanted to license the BA seat by this time so that boat had already sailed. BA were 6yrs too late.
Sure. My question was more around whether they had tried to license it back in, say, 2000, when it might have been a hot commodity, rather than 6 years later
Rightly or wrongly from a customer experience perspective in not investing in product development at that time it was a cost effective revamp from an accounting and shareholder perspective.
It may have been cost-effective to the accountants (who often focus heavily on costs), but whether it was effective for shareholders depends on how much revenue was sacrificed. I don't doubt that BAEC/Avios kept a bunch of business locked in, but an FFP can only drive so much business. And at some point, even loyal customers will start to leave, or at least steer some portion of their business away, if the product is bad enough. I wonder how much revenue BA lost as a result of holding on to those old seats too long.
Originally Posted by
13901
On the other hand, changing Club World wasn't something to be taken lightly and I do understand why it's taken so long. For starters, it's expensive. The pricetag for refurbishing a plane is well north of 60 million, depending on the size. The 77W refurbishment was a bit above half a billion euros.
Sure, but interiors also only have a certain life. At some point, large expenditures become necessary to start replacing broken parts, reupholstering seats, increasing problems with old electronics, etc. Not as expensive as a fancy new interior, but the capex on the new interior is partly offset by avoiding those high ongoing maintenance expenses.