FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Future Direction of BA? (NOT BA[E]C Related)
Old Jan 3, 2025 | 2:55 am
  #3  
mrpacifist
5 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: London, UK
Posts: 358
I'm 100% with you on this. I'm still assessing the Club news but on the network side, things got clear for a while now. Actually for me, it was already a growing issue and the frequent flyer program might just be the tipping point. The offering to Asia Pacific is particularly appalling. Other OW fares have been either too high or timings did not always work for me so the variety in the last fews years has just been decreasing more and more. It felt that just like the bumps in service quality, we were served smokescreens to continue flying BA somehow. Anytime I brought this up I was told "yes but the fuel" "yes but the pandemic" "yes but the longer routes" - hmm yes, but somehow AF, LX or LH continued to fly a dense network to Asia. Actually, AF opens new routes like Manila and additional flights to Bangkok this season. Munich got new direct connections to Hong Kong. Hubs like Japan are better served with direct connections to Kansai or Nagoya. And Asian carriers with far superior products continue their expansion with returns to European cities like Amsterdam. The same situation goes for leisure routes too. BA used to have interesting connections like the Seychelles, now it's gone. It's also annoying that emerging markets like Vietnam have been ignored for far too long. It's been discussed extensively but yes I feel my needs started to diverge a long time ago and this actually is a wake up call as the latest Club changes brought up a wider evaluation of what to do next. I am not really excited by the launch of Pittsburgh or Nashville as we have seen in the last few years and even if I understand the economic argument, there is still something odd in becoming a smaller focused network, with a restricted airline when direct competitors and similar players somehow manage to make it work.
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