When all said & done, I suppose the fundamental issue here is that for as long as flyers are happy to shell out for what you describe not unreasonably as a Y+ product (same narrow seat as economy of course !) aboard BA, there is virtually zero hope of any meaningful improvement to the customer experience. And, with all due respect to the airline’s management, you can’t really knock the BA business strategy - even though it is of course driven by maximisation of profit, rather than any focus on quality and consistent service standards.

What incentive or motivation would the airline have to upgrade the current mediocre offering ? If a painter/ decorator finds himself earning a very healthy living from using only average quality paint and not worrying too much about attention to detail, he might not feel it’s worth the effort to ‘up his game.’

And perhaps there is another factor at play here (albeit one that is slowly changing in the wake of the former BAEC morphing into a very different animal known as BAC) : perhaps a good number of BA loyalists have become so locked in to the benefits programme and status chasing / renewal, that they have become reluctant to look elsewhere, and are still programmed in that mindset. And maybe others are tied to BA by corporate deals ….. ?

BA sure know how to charge (and you can’t blame them whilst demand remains high !) when it suits. Say you were looking to fly Heathrow to Istanbul around mid-May, a one week trip with example dates such as out 13th and back 20th (both sectors at pleasant times in the middle of the day) :

you could book BA for £1,126 return or you could go with TK for £1,044 return

The hugely-entertaining comparison by OP mario describes what one can expect from the two carriers ; and yet despite the obvious gulf in respective hard and soft business product standards, AND the fact that BA can sometimes be more expensive than a true biz product offered by TK, the BA flights will almost certainly be full or close to full.

One other interesting (to me, at least !) point is the reference by several fellow FT-ers to price differentials for dates when the gap is considerably wider than in my quoted example, and when BA is considerably cheaper. Price is undoubtedly a key determinant in customer choices / priorities …… BUT I am more than a little puzzled at just how quick some folk are to stress that no way would they pay TK a higher price for a superior product …… and yet the same folk don’t give a second thought to dropping what is often several hundred pounds more for a CE seat on BA, over & above the cost of a seat in ET, with the only real onboard benefits being an empty adjacent seat and a £10 supermarket-style ready meal.

YMMV as always.