Diver Boy

I may have just not seen this before but today entering the departures area at LHR T5, by the self checkin machines there were the usual helpers but I noticed they were wearing sashes saying "ask me about an upgrade".

Are the cuts biting enough that enough people are not booking or is this just something they normally do this time of year. I've normally already left the country by now for Christmas holidays.

ratypus

Sounds like a Virgin Atlantic marketing ploy to me...;-0

gcuk

How tacky and from a brand that used to market itself as 'the world's favourite airline'.

UKtravelbear

Nothing tacky about it at all.

Look at the many threads on here asking about upgrades some asking 'who do I ask' and given there will be more leisure travellers at the moment due to Christmas it's a good way to up-sell. And some of those might turn in to regular J flyers

By the way YIELDS are pretty good for BA. LOADS may be a different matter.

flatlander

If you mean yield/passenger, that isn't what mattters, it's RASK. A sparsely populated cabin of people paying high prices will not do, as that revenue across all the available seat-kilometers in the cabin will be too low.

BA RASK is currently somewhat declining, a couple of percent in the last results, as I recall. It is still quite good, but not heading in the right direction.

However, not too many people in the general traveller population may know about BA's often reasonably-priced upgrades in the low season, so I can see BA wanting to try some promotional activity - even if such may be at odds with a "calm, luxury" brand.

subject2load

Well-made points re the importance of RASK.

And yes ...... staff wearing sashes to promote on-the-spot upgrades would indeed be at odds with a "calm, luxury brand". BUT here we're talking about BA, so it's an ideal fit really.

orbitmic

Actually, that's exactly the other way round. Loads are generally stationary (but premium loads have gone down), however, yields have sharply gone down: -5% last year for BA, and nearly -9% for IAG as a whole (BA figures not available as yet) between Jan and Sept this year. Yields for AF and LH have gone up during the same period. See details in other recent threads.

BApilotinsider

I've just been reading last months numbers. Premium traffic was up 4.7% across IAG versus 2015.

orbitmic

Thanks. That's good news for IAG. But what was the capacity change? Also, last year, IAG's premium loads were up as a whole but BA's down. It is perfectly possible that this will be different this year, but we'll need more than the IAG change in traffic figure to know.

BApilotinsider

From another thread.

orbitmic

I haven't looked at the transitional figures myself, the ones I saw were reported by someone else in another thread (and somehow they mentioned much worse figures: about -9% I think).

Since all of those threads are discussing whether service changes impact yields, the group figures tell you absolutely nothing: indeed, if the evolution of the low cost market pricing with VY, HV, and 4U negates the evolution for BA, AF, or LH, that might tell you that it is a good strategy not to have all your eggs in the same basket, but not whether the service changes by BA, AF, or LH have any impact on yield. For those, you need the airline-specific figures and those, to my knowledge, are only provided in March for the year before.

On that front, I can only repeat what I said before (linking to the relevant stats in other threads): in 2015, BA plc RASK was down 4.7% in 2015 and their RRPK (which some specialised analysts prefer to use) by 5.2%. That was BA as an airline. During the same year, the RASK and RRPK for both AF and LH was up about 5% and not down.

Maybe in March, we'll find out that BA have turned the tide but I frankly doubt it. Maybe we'll find that the yield recovery for AF and/or LH has been halted (that in a way is more of a possibility), but if someone is able to guess that from group figures in October, they are far more clever than me.

Incidentally, even if, for whatever reason (that would have nothing to do with service impact), one wanted to compare the performances of the IAG, AFKL, and LH groups, and even if one takes littletiger's comment that -5.9% was 'much better than expected' (I haven't got BA shares so I'm happy to take his/her word for it, although I'll admit I'm not that certain I'd be happy with -5.9% as an investor myself), I would argue that calling -5.9% 'much better' than -6.5% and -6.7% is a rather 'enthusiastic' take on statistics. By contrast, I would expect that for most people, the difference between -5% and +5% is intuitively rather clear.

xenole

Have BA stopped displaying the check-in counter signs they used to have at, say MAN, where they would advertise "upgrade to WT+ for £179"? Can't say I've seen any (possibly as I use mobile passes a lot with hand baggage).

Would have thought these were more direct than sash wearing staff that may give the impression that you can get a free upgrade from the "ask me about upgrade" slogan.

orbitmic

I think they have different phrasings at different airports. More generally, while I have made my comments on the actual figures available, I personally do not see the advertising of discounted upgrades as a sign of lowering load, nor even as a predictor of lowering yields. BA have had promotional upgrade operations for years, that is nothing new, and quite frankly, they are not even always good deals for the passengers as often, regular ticket + 'special price' upgrade may be more expensive than many regular priced restricted premium tickets.

I appreciate that people are eager to know what the BA situation is, but I think that we need to accept that the people who know cannot leak information, and the relevant public information is little and only comes once a year when the airline has no choice but to publish extensive details about each airline's operations. Till then, we can try and read in coffee cups and tarot card decks or double guess how to extrapolate signs, anecdotes, or figures that do not measure what we need but patience is the name of the game, and in truth, even the 2016 figures will only tell us about, say, 2015 changes mostly and we won't know about any effect of current and forthcoming announced service changes until March 2018 or March 2019. By which time, more strategic decisions may have also come into play, which effects will be known even later.

flatlander

The current state of RASK, forward predicted RASK, booking value, etc, are critical business indicators for BA that will be quite confidential and it would be a major problem (likely leading to regulatory investigation) if they leaked without being announced.

So we can look at the previously reported revenue metrics, add in competitor information, general external effects such as the economy, or obvious problems (widespread staff strike, operational disaster, etc), and add in any observations we have ourselves (try to discount personal bias, "My flight was rammed full!" means little, unless you fly it more than weekly) and speculate.

In the current circumstances, BA RASK was down in their last announced results, and CASK was down almost in line with that, and all negative external forces on BA are acting as strongly as, or more strongly than, at the time of the last results. Meanwhile we see attempts to increase marginal revenue in several ways, such as increasing ancillary charges and greater attempts to sell distressed product (unbooked premium seats about to depart).

Putting these together, it is hard to see anything other than a company under continuing commercial pressure and unlikely to announce very much better earning ratios, profit ratios, etc.