OK, now it's making more sense and I've learned a bit more about how this all works.
Originally Posted by Globaliser
BTW, in case you're still wondering about the rationale for the BA policy, one of the things that has been happening more and more frequently is travellers booking their connections on two separate tickets not just to get the cheaper fares, but also to circumvent a minimum connecting time requirement.
I'm not still wondering; if the ticket's are unrelated, the TA should have mentioned it and given me the option to spend more and check it through all the way.
But as for the other thing, while it wouldn't surprise me if people did this a lot to save money, I can't imagine that the quantities of people trying to circumvent a minimum connecting time requirement are enough to warrant a special policy. In this day of regular delays and security checks, out of a million passengers, I doubt that more than 1 or 2 would bother to risk missing their connection to shorten their waiting time by a half an hour. Doesn't make sense.
Inevitably, if people do that, there is a much increased chance that baggage will misconnect. Guess who ends up lumbered with the cost of sorting that out? I think that you'll find that it costs more than $20 a bag to reunited a late bag with a passenger.
I'm not really convinced that it's as much as they make it out to be. They've got the staff paid for already. They aren't making new routes just for lost luggage. A few phone calls is 50 cents. The cost is amortized over many customers and the gain in goodwill and customer relations brings positive benefits... So theoretically they may need to spend a bit more here and there if lost luggage becomes more frequent, but there will always be lost luggage and that staff will have to be hired and be available no matter if this policy is in effect or not.
As a CFO I know told me, companies can make it sound like anything is extremely expensive.
You can't take these reports too seriously. They are used to justify things that inconvenience you and help them.
I read an article about salaries of CEOs and how many airlines did massive cost-cutting and layoffs, but the ratio of CEO pay compared to regular employee salaries were still astronomical. If they want to cut costs they should start with the corporate salaries before asking their customers to suffer.
It may not apply in thise particular case, but I'm just generalizing.