brentford77

So I need to go to NY for a day in a fortnight. As it happens I had an unused flexible JFK-LGW leg in W so I rescheduled that for my return. However, I need a single flight to NYC on Monday 4th Dec in the morning. Nothing doing on BA: £1,500 in Y, £1,800 in W and the price for J is apparently to buy the aircraft?? Putting in a spurious return date gets me a Y ticket for £430. So in the end, I have plumped for the Norwegian LGW-JFK flight and rather than buy the £210 Y ticket have paid £550 for their premium product which as far as I can see, is more akin to Club World pre flat bed (who remembers the Club Cradle seat!) than W. So it got me wondering, how long term sustainable do we all think BA's policy of not selling pro rata priced one ways on N American routes is? They never did that in Europe until the low cost carriers forced them to. Is that day coming on flights across the pond?

madfish

Did you try pricing it as a return as a holiday booking. Prices would be significantly less especially as not including Saturday night stay.

brentford77

Yes. Cheapest I could get for a return with a night in a hotel was £2,300 in Y!

Globaliser

Depends on what you mean by "long term". If it's in the John Maynard Keynes sense, then I wouldn't like to bet on it being around until then. But I would be surprised if it went away any time soon. On short-haul, the low-fare airlines penetrated the market deeply and quickly. But despite RYR's repeated threats / promises, we haven't yet seen anything like that on long-haul; the ramp-up of airlines like DY has been rather more gradual.

ahmetdouas

I hope so, but that requires DY and potentially other low costs to take up a lot of market share from the majors to force them to charge low prices for one ways like it happens in Europe now.

corporate-wage-slave

I sometimes wonder that too, and I've watched the more direct competing routes (e.g. LGW-FLL/OAK) and despite everything they quote on return ticket basis on these routes despite the fact that they could as a one-off abandon this on these hermetically sealed off routes. What they do, however, is price the return flights very, very competitively against DY, knowing that most passengers are going to book that way either on DY or BA. For example booking via LGW using third country itineraries don't work on these routes (e.g. FCO-LGW-OAK), the pricing is end-on and not particularly interesting even after APD.

I've come to the conclusion that BA's fight against DY is actually all about protecting the existing return pricing structure: if they ended up with cheap single pricing then they have effectively lost the war. And with it, huge implications for BA, for whom UK-USA is their most important market by far.

The trick to single trips from USA to Europe is either to use Avios on IB or Aer Lingus (admittedly I would be doing this in business). Or indeed to book returns to certain places in Europe, ideally at the right time.

_nate

You can also find occasional one-way BA flights for cash this way via codeshares through some travel agents.

orbitmic

Indeed though crucially, depending on the scope of the announced dynamic pricing award evolution, whether that avios sweet spot will still be there ina year from now is anyone’s guess. If BAEC go as far into it as the new Flying Blue, that one way LHR-JFK May soon cost significantly more avios than buying it return!!

DYKWIA

I hope everything goes OK. Norwegian have had some issues recently with their 787s, and have been cancelling or subbing A330s from a charter airline (some with 3x3x3 in Y!). See the Other European Airlines forum.

brentford77

Can live with the risk. Have found myself on BA flights operated by QR and FR in recent years! Seriously though, I think they have had something like 1-2% of 787 flights replaced by the wet leased 330 and 340's. I can live with that level of risk for the saving involved!