Originally Posted by
hfly
DYKWIA.MAN is in Scotland? I never knew that. Or maybe you did not read the above correctly. As I noted above, I said 1994 IIRC - that means IF I RECALL CORRECTLY. After reading Blue's comment above I have done a search and can find reference to the agreement "going to be changed at the end of 1990", and that NW was going to be the first to fly into GLA........as they were the only US carrier into Scotland at the time as they flew to Prestwick. I very vividly flying into/out of Prestwick in late 1991, so it could not have been earlier than 1992 at some point that they switched over to Glasgow, looking back at my records, I did in fact fly BOS-GLA and v/v in early 1993. So my recollection of of this event may have been off by 14 months or whatever from 30 years ago...oops. As for MAN or wherever IN ENGLAND, non-LHR I mentioned above that long haul carriers have played in and out of other English - and Northern Irish cities for years.
James...........and BA has 12 A380's and EK has 119. Since BA dumped the 747's their average amount of Premium seats is WAY DOWN, and is not really coming back. In any case. Despite using the name WT+ there is nothing Premium about that class and that is not what we are talking about here. This thread was about CLUB, and I was generous in including F where it exists. For that matter on my last half dozen long haul BA flights "Premium Economy" has been undersold, exists almost solely of those upgraded from economy and the few lucky souls that purchased WT+ have been upgraded to Club.
You are right though that in putting the numbers together I totally ignored the other BA flight or 2 that BA operate to Dubai (I had thought it was 2x not 3x, and AFAIK the A380 is not a regular on the route throughout the year. It is however for EK who make a point of flying LHR all A380's, you know like the big model plane that they replaced the Concorde with.....
But I still do not think that you are getting the point here............It is not just about EK, it is about competition from the ME3, the US3, TK and for that matter a half dozen Asian airlines who all significantly raised their game way above BA's in the Business Class arena, while BA sat and dithered, and why BA's passenger numbers have essentially been flat for a decade (not counting Covid years), I mean seriously...............in 2000 BA flew to how many destinations in Asia including the Middle East and Oceania? Something like 45 destinations. How many does it fly now? Perhaps 20. Do you know why that is? Because the ME3 (+TK) killed them in many of these markets. Similarly how no one in the North of England or Scotland transits London anymore when flying East of Suez, hardly anyone flying between North America and the Sub-Continent flies BA anymore and instead chooses to go via the ME.
The ones BA kept are high yield routes, which makes sense. Why would a business operate to somewhere where yield is low when they can codeshare or joint venture and receive revenue that way, at the same time free up an aircraft to operate a high yield route. I think you're seeing it from a very simplistic perspective.
Club product yes needed a refresh, but was it because of it that it cut direct flights to Far East and Ocenania? No.
Give you an example an aircraft would need about 52 hours to go all the way to Australia from LHR and back. Meanwhile that same aircraft to do nearly 4 round trips to east coast from LHR, and the average revenues per trip to and from east coast are about the same if not higher than going to and from Australia because of the nature of travel business v leisure. So why waste that aircraft when you can focus on where the revenue is and codeshare or joint business with one of the ME3 and have a slice of that revenue anyway without wasting your resources.