Originally Posted by
AlicorporateUK
The fact that the industry as a whole has seen a number of cutbacks affecting not only catering stricto sensu but also frequent flyer programs, airport and on-board experience amongst others is painfully obvious, one only needs to look at the likes of BA, Air France, KLM and so on to comprehend the downward trend. I know perfectly well that things used to be better 3 or 16 years ago - so what? My opinion (as usual, each to their own) based on own experience is that Austrian manages much better than its Frankfurt-based owners and needless to say I do not refer merely to food (as I clearly specified in my previous post, that's airline food after all and incidentally I don't fly business because of the food): since you've mentioned "overall product", I find both on-board service and attitude of their cabin crew way more consistent (as opposed to Lufthansa but also other airlines), on-time performance way better (as data goes to show), their hub great for connecting and their network (Balkans/Central-Eastern Europe) fits my bill smoothly. Then of course I'd also like things to be like back in 1999, a comfy seat on a MD80 with plenty of legroom or even a proper business class seat on a 25-minutes' flight between Manchester and London on a BMI's 321 together with the return of the Diamond Club. Oh, and I'd like to be 26 again.
G
One thing I would
not want to do is get the prices back. Don't know what the prices were like where Concerto or you were milling about, but in my neck of woods a typical intra-Europe Y class return was 500-600ish EUR.
Even disregarding inflation in the meantime, that's still enough to get J ticket and J service if I so desired (and I do it every so often, though admittedly a lot more on ST since in M&M a segment is a segment and I don't qualify on miles).
But I much prefer to have the option of flying in Y for 200-250 r/t even if it means weak service level.