golfmad

Nicely done. Why let a significant story such as investment in a new CW seat get in the way of a good BA bashing opportunity. There are good reasons to bash BA but I'm not entirely sure that this is one of them.

Dan72

Not really, no. The first Gulf war decimated international air travel. If it kicks off with N. Korea they should expect some impact on international air travel.

Disco Volante

The seat was announced at the same time as the blanket. Where is it?

golfmad

From my limited knowledge of these things, the seat takes a little longer to produce than a blanket.

Dan72

I would expect a great deal of the money will be being spent on any new CW proposition. Product development takes a while and a great deal of money will be spent before new products come to fruition.

Dave_C

The extra €200m is interesting. To my mind that means that they're going to roll it out more widely, or they're spending more on the seat, or they're running over-budget, or a mixture of all three.

But it's been interesting that it's been coming soon for several years.

There was also nothing at all about first class on the BA slides. Which I found to be a curious omission.

Keystone

Not sure if this is what BA means by Dynamic pricing, but I experienced a version at a UK Marriott affiliate last week.
A few days before check in I received an email asking if I would like to upgrade my room, and asked me to make an offer (in GBP), giving me the normal upgrade price (in this case £20). They said they would tell me by email if my offer was accepted or at checkin. I opted to bid £11, which was accepted by email a couple of days later well before checkin. The email and bidding system seemed to be run by a third party.

This model could easily work for BA – if they know they’re likely to have unsold CW seats, they could email the WT+ pax who have sufficient Avios in their accounts, tell them the normal Avios upgrade cost, ask them to make a bid and let them know if they’re upgraded at any point up to the gate. They could control who they make offers to, market it and redeem at any point in the whole process from first booking to the gate.

Disco Volante

I agree, but almost 20 years is pushing it. The seat is, of course, going to be installed on the A350 we were told in April, but things seem to have gone very quiet on that front since. But a new trolley will make all the difference.

orbitmic

Hmmm... basically, no. Dynamic pricing just means that there will be multiple pricing levels for redemptions depending on demand. At best, the cheapest one will remain the current level but otherwise, avios levels will go up, in all likelihood quite a lot so (I'd guess at least double for the highest band). It won't be bid based and is most unlikely to enable you to get cheaper upgrades or redemptions.

FlyerTalker688786

This is interesting. Because back in 2014, I said BA should purchase Niki from Airberlin. The THREAD is HERE. People seems to think that was a bad idea.

Geordie405

Seemingly not, according to some people on here! It amazes me that no matter what BA says or does it is never good enough. There is so much cynicism and negativity on this board lately. Clearly there's no pleasing some people. Anyway, at the risk of sounding overly negative myself I will stop there and make my morning coffee

Dave_C

Do you not think the current product is driving that?

If BA had a market leading, truly premium offering, then I think sentiment here would be very different.

xenole

I would have assumed that companies are constantly looking at improvements rather than "oh, so and so has a new seat. We really should perhaps start looking at doing something".

wrp96

You would think, but as there haven't been any changes to the CW seat in several years, I think it's understandable that some people might believe that BA has been following option #2 .

Dave_C

Another interesting point I thought was that Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus all mentioned NPS either improving, or holding steady.

The BA slides had no mention of it. I think that's telling.