I'm well aware of who the largest shareholder is. Absolutely no idea what you believe that has to do with the pricing model BA uses for seat assignments, which was in play long before that Qatar government took an equity potion in IAG.

I'm not saying I love policies such as this, but its utterly naive to believe it's not viable. As I said, BA has charged for premium seat assignments for a very long time and they still seem to be able to fill the cabins. If consumers wholesale rejected that model then BA would have had to backtrack on it by now and clearly they have not.

One of the challenges in having a rational discussion about this is that most average consumers (and sadly a very high percentage of FTers) can't seem to do math. There have been times in the past where we did in fact pay for seat assignments in the BA premium cabin, BUT, the BA ticket was significantly cheaper than the same ticket on other carriers that provided seat assignments for "free." BA often has very affordable tickets when one uses strategies like AARP discounts, Chase 10% discounts, etc. Many on FT seem to just have this "moral aversion" to certain fees/policies without doing the math on the overall, all in pricing, which at the end of the day is all that matters. They willingly pay $600 more for a ticket that includes a "free" seat assignment to avoid paying $120 for an actual seat assignment, which is ridiculous. But they feel victorious because they avoided the perception of being "nickel and dimed" (even though in reality, they actually were nicked and dimed)

Finally, FT is just a completely eccentric little bizarro world that obsesses about this stuff, but like it or not, there is absolutely a market for a "lite" business class product. There are people willing to pay more for a comfortable seat on a long haul flight but they could care less about lounges, etc.

Regards