Thought something strange earlier in the week when trying to book RIX return, no outbound flights showing, but could book an inbound (even on a day that was showing no outbound).
LOT have some reasonable times and fares, so they shall likely get my ��.

With the caveat that I haven�t looked into the car hire side of things: don�t cancel your booking, book flights in the same travel class to the same destination airport on an airline of your choice, and force reimbursement through CEDR. This was confirmed by CEDR to be the correct course of action in my recent case against BA where they refused to rebook on other airlines.

Normally, that’s good advice, but the timings to D�sseldorf on BA are still more convenient for me than Eurowings to Cologne, before you consider loyalty aspects or the quality of the Club Europe product. Even if I had done that, BA would have wrongly refused to honour the car hire booking because they said there was no way to split the flight from the car hire. This means that the booking would have automatically cancelled when I either didn’t pay the balance or pay the difference to combine it with a new flight.

(I also successfully claimed via CEDR for self-help when BA wouldn’t reroute during the air traffic failure in August 2023).

Extremely low this year, close to zero. I'm sure there are peaks in demand but they have to work on at least six-monthly intervals.

It could come back in a few years, but I'd see Stuttgart as a stronger candidate - and even then, as with Cologne, the traffic is heavily skewed towards German-originating travellers and those with a preference for LH or *A without a huge amount of incremental long-haul feed. This means that BA has to play second fiddle to Eurowings and try to compete on price using its LHR cost base.

Regardless of behavioural changes due to BAC, BA’s German operation is currently inferior even to the current LH Group product. If I can’t burn Avios for CE then I’m booking business on LH and it’s usually cheaper and better than CE as well as far more likely to be on time.

It’s a shame that Stuttgart is being dropped but the frequencies and timings were not good anyway and there is still EW if you really must fly that route. Personally, I would take LH to FRA and jump on the ICE to Stuttgart. If you’re heading into the city there’s not that much difference in journey time.

My first time at STR earlier this year and thought it was a pleasant airport. By contrast, FRA and MUC are on my avoid list for being unpleasant to say the least. If I were to travel to STR again next year, I too would switch airlines.

For me, there would be no head scratching. In the past, I flew LHR-FRA and then ICE down to Karlsruhe, which was a proper faff with only 1 direct train per hour or a change at Manheim. Having now used STR and Eurowings, I�d rather a direct flight with Eurowings. YMMV.

You really should offer your market insights to BA. I'm sure you could give McKinsey a run for their money.

FWIW, Stuttgart is the center of a large metro area of some 5.3 mil people (um, the largest in Germany) that are mainly concentrated south of the city itself (i.e., in the opposite direction to FRA, but closer to STR). It is a major center in a major economic area in one of the world's largest economies. To which we can add that this same southerly area is also the focus of a large state incentivized program to make it a center for major 'silicon' industries. As with many (most?) of the people living / working in this area, FRA is an NFW for me -- ZRH is by far my closest alternative based on other transit links.

Again, FWIW, before I moved to STR, my local airport was SJC: In that case, I got to witness the industry exit when these kinds of "but they could always use SFO" decisions were made in the past. It goes like this, and, since this is, to an extent, a frequent flier forum, I should remind us all that it is important to recognize the idea that business travel is first a perk and later a chore, and that as it moves towards the latter, predictability becomes all. My predictable business habits are your profit center. If you make me change them, you have lost me. I won't be back the unless someone else who became my new predictable ....s up so bad that I have to.

Since we can all be absolutely confident in BA's management (just look at the smooth transition of the credit card programs if you doubt this), we can only assume that they have done their forecasts and know what is best for them. What I can assure you if is that, "oh just use FRA," won't be buttering much bread in the business community around STR. I can only hope that the buckets and spades work out for them as they hope.

r

London City to Frankfurt is also scrapped for next summer.

So what is being added with all of these cancellations?

This tells us one of two things: either the LCY route is hurting yields on LHR-FRA, making that marginal, or demand is down solely out of LCY. Either way, and I hate to mention another UK industry in decline, this has to be down to reduced demand in the banking sector.

I imagine a lot of the day trip/one night stay meetings that the LCY-FRA route was powering have shifted online over the past few years plus as you say, the economies at both ends of that route aren't doing great.

I was wondering if this is a fall in banking demand, or if the transfers out of Wharf would impact this?
Deutsche has centralised on-top of Crossrail. HSBC is moving to the City (mind you their demand is mostly DUS). I don't think the American banks in the Wharf target operations in FRA as much as European banks.

Just got round to reading the High Life email i received yesterday and saw this link ...!!

Even from Canary Wharf, Heathrow is a less hideous prospect than it once was thanks to Crossrail. City's USP was always going to be hurt a bit by Crossrail and I think the gradual shift from BA away from business hubs towards places that upper middle class people like to go on holiday shows this.