madfish

I have to disagree regarding fare changes. Yesterday, late evening, LHR to Edi was £76 HBO and £86 with checked bag, for 7/5/16. Earlier flights were around £116 HBO. This morning the same flights are £86/£102 with the earlier prices increasing significantly. BA1438 was £142 with checked bag yesterday and now £175 this morning. Although as a disclaimer, I did not check booking codes.

travelwithross

My question is - not sure it's been answered as I don't have time to read the thread - do existing bookings made before the 9th March with baggage qualify for the change to a different flight? Could come in handy for a few flights I have coming up.

crazy8534

That's interesting. I am not seeing any changes at all in prices for the LHR-EDI flights I checked for November last week/today.

Cymro

I've been checking LHR - FRA eight months out (so lots of O-class availability) and the flexibility is there, but prices haven't changed.

I think what we will see is some revenue management to push people into higher classes earlier on, rather than explicit price increases, but I have no evidence for that.

What it does mean is that people may gain the system: pay £75 rather than £175 for the earlier flight they want, and accept standby on the earlier flight. The effect should be to flatten fares so that the cheap buckets sell out on the later flight, but fewer people end up buying B/H/Y fares, unless revenue management shifts the fare bucket availability toward the upper end of the scale.

Will missed flights, and/or missed connections will be same-day changeable? Or would you have to get your change request in before departure/before check-in closes?

Apparently all change fees, but not cancellation fees, have gone - so you can always upgrade for a fare difference. If there is subsequently a CE sale - happy days!

Also, I just saw that LGW-JER is still on the old rules.

CrazyJ82

This is highly unscientific since I didn't think to take notes on fares last week, but for a couple routes I frequent, so far the differential between HBO and the new-look non-HBO is roughly the same as it had been before, on the order of GBP15-20 per segment. Although I'm not sure how that makes economic sense (are they sufficiently worried about HBO cannibalizing revenue that they think it makes more sense to cannibalize the old semi-flex fares?) so I'm not ready to relax just yet.

MHendo84

A few days ago, I made a flight booking and added car hire during the booking process, as this used to come out cheaper than the actual Flight+Car booking process.

After the changes, this now seems to keep the quoted prices for the flights and simply adds the car hire to the total.

So before the changes,

Flights (Inc Car Hire) for 5 people £591.00
Flight+Car for 5 people £614.00

After Changes;

Flights (Inc Car Hire) for 5 people £758.10 (£667.10 for flights & £91.00 for Car Hire); or
Flights+Car for 5 people £603.00

I also notice that now, the baggage allowance is only 1x23kg, where the booking I made on Monday includes 2x23kg.

Glad I booked on Monday

radui

It does seem that prices have stayed the same for "with checked baggage", but fare rules have transformed into semi-flex. I booked LHR-OTP return "standard" in November for £133, can now book the new "semi-flex" for the same £133. It does seem too good to be true and that we got something for nothing - but if it holds up it is a genuine improvement.

orbitmic

on the routes I am looking it is old fares and old rules still...

edit: just looking at LHR-OTP in June it still shows old rules too, with standard still clearly excluding same day free changes. i'm a bit confused...

radui

I just searched for June and under "Your Ticket Features" Standard is Sold Out, with Semi-Flex available (but prices are much lower than previous Semi-Flex). Standard being sold out seems to be the intermediary step in introducing the new fare structure.

lorcancoyle

chrisljo seems to be correct - below for OSL

Cymro

Probably a bit too OT but the answer is that it makes no difference, as long as the short haul allows checked baggage (or you buy HBO and buy up, although that probably doesn't make sense). Even the very cheapest fares with checked baggage will allow you to check through.

travelwithross

So can Golds and Silvers still select seats from the time of booking, or not?

Happytohelp

Yes, just as before.
The only change is the added flexibility and being able to reserve your seat earlier.

"All posts are my own and not on behalf of my employer"

Tobias-UK

From the OP it yes, except on HBO fares.

corporate-wage-slave

What I did was take a series of screen shots of my 4 most frequent services, for 22 March and 20 April. Now I took these screenshots 48 hours back so there will be changes in fares over a 48 hour period, quite legitimately.

My impressions, taking into account that it's a limited amount of data:

- no changes to LGW prices at all, but that's because the changes haven't rolled through there, still showing change fees on non HBO.
- not much changes on LCY, but the changes are in place
- not much change on LHR fares for flights a month out for shorthaul Europe
- an increase in fares for Domestic, the NCL-LHR £46 is now £54 across the board
- an increase in fares close up to departure, in the £3 to £10 area. So the delta between HBO and non HBO is maintained, but the fares are up
- no obvious changes to Club Europe, so closer in this becomes more attractive.

So my overall impression is that for leisure travellers booking in advance this works fine, you get "free" extra flexibility. For domestic travellers there seems to be a fare increase. For people buying close in (e.g. business travellers) the fares are a bit higher but the non HBO fare is more attractive.

It's worth remembering that the competition here is Easyjet: they don't give any meaningful refund on their normal fares, unlike BA which at the cheaper end gives quite a hefty refund on cancellations. So subject to how LGW works out, where the U2 competition is far greater, there is a moderate repositioning of BA's fares in these changes.