Originally Posted by Flying Doctor

So.....

I have also read the best part of 160 pages of this and counting.....

I think we can actually see where BA wants to head with all of this going forward:

1) Key markets. This is basically the USA, India, a bit of South Africa and a couple of other key premium leisure destinations. It is in essence where short of flying some daft routing there is no competition that is significantly better. Middle East, Far East etc - there are plenty of carriers that, no matter what you think of BA, are just better. We can see that because the routings are very much getting US focused, South America can be served via IB and anything East QR, CX etc. Sydney - I am betting that is canned in 2027 once the QF double sunrise project comes into full force with LHR SYD and LHR MEL direct, non stop. QF will hoover up all the premium traffic that BA seems to be after so it will finally cull one of the most complex and expensive routes it operates and will allow it to serve even more US destinations which for the most part can be serviced by a single airframe in 24 hours there and back. Europe they have to serve and also they don't want to relinquish too many slots at Heathrow because that keeps fares high.

2) Passengers. They are chasing those on full fare J, the known most profitable part of the business. It is nothing more than that. Cheap fares are to soak up excess capacity. They get lounge access anyway, profit margins are high, they tend to be time sensitive so don't sit the lounge much etc etc. That this is not what it was pre-pandemic, was diminishing anyway, many companies increasingly are enforcing a W policy especially for East Coast US day flying and all the rest seems not to have registered on the radar and but do remember even deeply discounted corporate fares are still way more per person than many sale fares etc. They for sure have known about Tier Points runs and people getting cards easier than they clearly want, people spending hours in lounges, guesting randoms in etc and they wanted to kill all of this off. This, no matter what you think, has pretty convincingly done that.

3) Fully unbundled fares. Many of you may have missed this over the festive period but someone on here spotted as they tried to book a fare that there were multiple options for cheapest business fare with add ons such as increased flexibility, refundability etc etc. This is like IB which often offers extra to allow changes on your cheap business fare, or QR where you can pay extra for lounge access etc. You can expect this direction of travel to continue, and indeed accelerate. American also does this with a premium on business fares to have the equivalent of concierge key ground services and handling (but they exclude this on the cheaper fares as an option).

4) Products. I know we all went 'Wow' with that new F cabin but F is on the way out, baring the A380. This will finally kill off the need for First which is costly, makes no money on all but a handful of routes with many flights full of Avios redemptions. Indeed several of us have previously commented that only one passenger had paid any cash for First. There are now an extremely small number of corporate policies that would allow any F travel as the optics are just seen as wrong (with several companies banning it outright even if cheap upgrades are offered, much like many companies ban gifted cards from BA which come with the larger corporate policies etc). So the F suite on the A380 is the final roll of the dice for a few routes like LAX where people will pay for F and are prepared to pay a considerable premium for it (more like GBP 1k each way rather than what we have previously seen). Again this then fits nicely with the main market which is TATL where all the US carriers have ditched F. Saying the very small F market will go via CDG or FRA well remember they both offer fewer routes, cost a lot more and many who can afford F are time poor and so the stop in CDG or FRA is not worth it. Just go direct from London (accepting that this is not the case for anyone outside the M25!)

5) Lounges. We have all seen the lounges full. I have been into the Gold lounge and have noted that it has been literally packed though of late it has been a bit better. No matter what you think if someone has paid full J for LHR JFK (or their company has) and then they cannot find somewhere to sit in peace etc then you can see where the howling will start, whether justified or not. Employee X uses it as an excuse that they cannot get any work done etc etc, queue large company Y that then says 'so why are we paying these high fares....' etc etc etc......

6) Numbers of card holders. I think they have started with 'We want X GGL, Y Gold etc etc' and then designed the revenue based frequent flyer programme backwards from that. They clearly, clearly want to thin the ranks of Gold and GGL, massively, and incentivise the rest of the scheme around spend.

So by 2027 what we will have? Most likely a much smaller airline, very clearly USA focused, full unbundling so very much a pay for which bits you want (lounges, priority boarding, ticket flexibility etc etc) and fewer status passengers.

I am not saying this is right, that BA has its sums correct, has misjudged the market or anything. Just this would seem where they want to head. As others have said, they will have planned this out with a contingency for losing custom with a contingency which I suspect is quite high so much like we are told Brunch is coming back and they aren't changing I think you will find they will sit this one out with a few offers in the short term.

Time will tell if they screwed it up........

FD.