Swanhunter

Excellent post. ^

jacobitetraveller

[QUOTE=Paralytic;24451572

I can't see many employers forcing staff to travel HBO if they have overnight stays, but if the tool does not allow it, it ends up time consuming to get an approved exception to what looks like a booking out of policy.[/QUOTE]

I have chatted to a few more people regarding this and It would appear that there are many companies that do insist on HBO fares even for overnights simply because it is the cheapest ticket---and as I have stated in early post this has caused problems for the employees

I find it interesting that when I search on BA for cheapest flights it does not default to the cheapest flight but actually the cheapest flight with checked baggage

Paralytic

Is it that the employers are enforcing HBO fares or that they are enforcing the cheapest fare, which just happens to be HBO? I suspect the latter.

Calchas

+1 I think this and your earlier posts are accurate and well expressed.

jacobitetraveller

I would agree with you there

I would be happy to see the HBO fares as they currently stand being scrapped
and seeing HBO as laptop size only

techie

Having read through pretty much all the posts here, there seems to be 3 separate groups of people:

1. People, who usually travel on HBO (though can afford non-HBO fares) and are disappointed at another status perk being taken away from them, since HBO + elite benefits was quite a sweet spot for them.

2. People, who travel on HBO because that's what their company's policy says they must and are miffed about not being able to select a seat, which they could before based on their status.

3. The rest of the crowd who are generally disappointed with continuing shenanigans from BA.

Personally, I have never booked an HBO fare and I doubt that I ever will. The only exception is probably if I am popping over somewhere for a day: there in the morning, back in the evening. And I've only done that once in my life. If I am going somewhere with at least one night's stay involved, I want the choice to take some checked baggage. The seat selection malarkey is less of an issue for me. When selecting a seat in advance, I tend to stray into the dangerous seat-shifting territory anyway.

shorthauldad

"Caused problems"? Do they pack like this?



(Assuming you're not transporting stuff that can't go in the cabin), if you can't pack for one night away from home in a small bag, something is very, very wrong.

HIDDY

For years BA and other major airlines were able to charge over the odds for air fares because they could. The general public had always accepted air travel was an expensive item to purchase so were none the wiser.
Then along came the low cost airlines who showed that air travel needn't be expensive and from then on the majors were in trouble. BA and their like had been found out so in order to survive they had to restructure big time. No more lounging about on beaches for days on end for the cabin crew for a start.

Personally I'm quite happy with the way things are now and I suspect the majority of air travellers are as well. Lower fares, adequate products and a decent rewards programme. BA have it spot on I reckon and the others are still playing catch-up. If it wasn't for the mistakes made by the industry during the last century BA would have been in a position to offer a better product.

corporate-wage-slave

For levity, I'll repeat some wise words to go with the above:

Natalie Keener: I really like my luggage.
Ryan Bingham: That's exactly what it is, it's luggage. You know how much time you lose by checking in?
Natalie Keener: I don't know. Five, ten minutes?
Ryan Bingham: 35 minutes a flight. I travel 270 days a year. That's 157 hours. That makes seven days. You're willing to throw away an entire week on that?
[Natalie sighs]

EuropeanPete

Does anyone know exactly when this comes into play? I'm going to try Easyjet on a business route for the first time ever, but I can't be bothered to wait for my cabin bag on a Friday afternoon.

I might well end up doing it this coming Friday, as the Easyjet flight looks like £55, whereas as part of a return the BA leg is £360 or a somewhat incredibly £750 sold as a single.

orbitmic

Well there are two possibilities: either the way things are now is right and BA have it spot on -- in which case all the new changes they are introducing take them away from the spot; or the way things will be after all those changes will be spot on -- in which case what BA is currently offering must be wrong. Both can't be true, and the "Before 2015 BA" and "After 2015 BA" will clearly be very different.

You are absolutely right and nobody is saying otherwise: the low cost competition has changed the competitive landscape thoroughly and legacy carriers could not have possibly remained competitive if they had not adapted their offer.

Things don't stop here however. An equally true fact is that legacy carriers cannot possibly be fully on par with low cost airlines because their cost structure is higher:

- Even without the "lounging around on the beach" for crews, salary costs are much higher for BA than they are for U2 or FR.

- Because legacy carriers need to feed a long haul network, they have to keep feeder routes which may be loss making on their own, but which closure would jeopardise the more profitable long haul network.

- For the same long haul logic reason, legacy carriers need to keep business cabins which are actually very expensive not least because they require that the airline keeps more staff onboard its plane (personnel remain the most expensive elastic aspect of running an airline).

All this means that even if they stop giving you free water, free seat selection or free hold luggage, neither their costs nor their fares can ever be as competitive as those of their low cost competitors (notwithstanding occasional anecdotal cases where low cost airline X will be more expensive than legacy carrier Y on a specific day/time/route combination).

This means that if a legacy airline wants a customer to choose them (regardless of fare type), they need to offer a service proposition which justifies people paying more than on low cost. If they do not and offer a service which is hardly different from that of their low cost competitors - they lose the game, as simple as that. That is what BMI and Aer Lingus were/have been experiencing over recent years.

Another way to phrase that, is that considering that it cannot lower its costs as much as competitors, legacy carriers such as BA absolutely must find creative way of offering the best possible product for a given cost.

This is where the HBO/status privilege change is particularly crucial. Letting status holders pick their seat has an exact cost of zero for the airline but offers significant value for the passengers which they would not get on an equivalent fare on low cost competitors. BA are withdrawing that additional value without in any way lowering their own costs.

This is where the situation is particularly striking. BA are not introducing this change because of a reaction to external competition but because of internal competition between their own HBO fare and their own luggage inclusive fares. It means that they adapt (in this particular case downgrade) a product not to be more competitive against the very rivals that you describe but to artificially create more difference between two of their own fare offers.

That to me can never be right precisely because of the reason that you mention: low cost competitors can only be the winners if BA makes its own product less competitive vis-à-vis its deadly rivals only to sort out a problem of internal balance between different fare types. It is simply wrong.

gcuk

2nd cabin bag on easyjet effective 19 March if you have Plus card, extra legroom or upfront seats or on Flexifare. They also allow access to speedy boarding.

Tafflyer

I tend to agree, and like you, I'll hardly take an HBO fare since most of my trips are for 5 or more days when I like the option of being able to check baggage.

I was concerned when the HBO fares were introduced because I was sure it would cause baggage problems on board, and it has. It has also almost certainly cost BA revenue, although why they can't simply increase fares by, say, 10 GBP/EUR/USD to offset that I do not know.

What irks me is the trend to a transactional culture. BA is merely following other airlines in doing this and it alienates the customer base enormously.

The next step will be eradication of other perks on cheaper tickets along with the ineligibility of cheaper fare buckets for op-up's, meaning that they will have the same stance as Lufthansa, upgrading a full-fare once-per-year Y passenger over a 150 flight-per-year frequent traveller on a cheaper ticket.

That's why my 300,000 mile per year Lufthansa habit became a high-TP BA habit.

I wonder if BA realise that their current success is based on exactly these steps being made previously by the competition they now seek to emulate.

It's annoying, because generally I love BA crews and the atmosphere on board. but I find myself flying more *A lately and see no point putting up with transfers at LHR when there is no longer an up side to it.

stifle

My alternative to flying BA is actually staying at home. I go on holiday too much anyway. Or failing which, taking the Eurostar which is adding destinations, cheaper, allows me to take on my bottle of Coke, and has phone service on board.
Indeed.
Quite. Even without the consent given by being an executive club member, processing aggregated data having removed personal identifiable information is outside the scope of the Data Protection Act.

StuckinITH

You are totally right. My dear wife who packs our bags when travelling tells me we can do a 9 nights trip in the winter or a 14 nights trip in the summer with HBO. That's way better than finding ourselves abroad without the baggage that misteriously was sent to Rio instead of Shanghai or Paris.