orbitmic

My personal prediction is that an increasing number of routes will lose F in years to come and BA will specialise in a few markets where they can sell their 8F at a hefty price. I think that they will keep more F destinations than, say, AF, but quite a lot fewer than they do now and I wouldn't be surprised if they announced that as part of equipment modernisation, they will switch more planes to 3 class than initially announced.

I may of course be totally wrong on all of that, but part of my thinking is that a paradoxical effect of the move to 8F is that whilst it makes seats less hard to fill, it means that the crewing impact of having an F cabin paradoxically higher (ie you commit the extra crew for an even smaller number of passengers and it may quickly not feel worth it). It also likely means that any ticket you need to sell at a discounted price (or worse, offer for awards or upgrades) brings the yield more dramatically down each time. All of this can quickly make the reduction in F a bit of a vicious circle, and whilst I have no doubt that this will prove a worthwhile switch on routes with high F potential (JFK, LAX, etc) many of the second tier destinations (from the point of view of BA's network -- I mean ATL is a huge airport, but simply not centre stage from the point of view of BA's strategy itself) will be deemed candidates to 3 class.