Or indeed still fly indirect, but maybe fly to AMS first and then on with KLM, or fly to DUB then onwards with EI etc etc. Once you decide to fly in-direct (or are forced to because there is no direct flight) the options and hence competition) are a lot more plentiful.

The flying more flights / connecting principle isn't just BA of course. Earlier this year I was visiting our data centres in Hong Kong and Singapore and it was significantly cheaper to fly LAS - LAX - HKG - SIN than to fly just to HKG even though, of course, you're flying through HKG to get to Singapore. An OpUp from WT+ to Business on the CX flight from LAX to HKG made the trip even better :)

Thats right. I typically don't book my own flights. And as you can see from my join date and post count I'm hardly "up to speed" on all the fine dealings of flight pricing.

Anything else?

You can perhaps see why people may be confused by your apparent knowledge/lack of knowledge when you seem to make contradictory posts.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29112756-post14.html

If you don’t book your own flights, who does when you book all the travel at work?

There are three possibilities I can think of:

(i) Fares filed for each fare bucket are higher for travel ex-GLA but BA's inventory optimisation platform has opened or been influenced to open a lower bucket, most likely to increase fares paid by passengers travelling ex-LHR
(ii) Fares filed for travel ex-GLA are indeed lower than fares filed for travel ex-LHR and this is a deliberate choice for indirect flight/competitive reasons
(iii) Fares filed for travel ex-GLA are indeed lower than fares filed for travel ex-LHR but this is not a deliberate choice - either BA are busy and will increase it to match LHR later or they forgot about it and will wait until somebody spots the anomaly before taking action.

Because the fare difference is so small and both GLA and LHR are in the UK my money would be on (iii) being most likely, (i) second most likely and (ii) being least likely.

There's also:
(iv) Dual Inventory Fares and
(v) Different Carrier Imposed Charge (Carrier Surcharge).
As it happens it is (v), since from London it is £203 and from Glasgow it is £116

Airline managers around the world will be delighted that you have all swallowed their story so comprehensively.

A long long time ago when airlines were state owned, and half of them were vanity projects for their governments, there was a lot of overcapacity. Some bright sparks in the fares department realised you might be able to fill up your empty planes by selling some dodgy fares that undercut your rival even though it was costing you more to carry the passengers and it was less convenient for them.

And lo, the marvellous model was born. Now that supply and demand are much better matched, airlines can't wean themselves off the model, because no-one wants to blink first. And so you have the fantastic situation where (if you indulge me for a second by assuming a much simpler global network and number of hubs) you have a flight from FRA- HKG half full of German passengers paying X, and half full of British passengers paying X/2, whilst the LHR-HKG flight is half full of Brits paying Y and Germans paying Y/2, whereas actually it would make much more sense and money to fly all the Germans from FRA with everyone paying 3/4X and fly all the Brits from LHR with everyone paying 3/4Y, and you could operate half the number of LHR-FRA flights too... And the occasional weirdo/afficionado who wants to fly indirect could pay an extra £100 or whatever for the cost of the extra flight, connections infrastructure etc. But like I say, no-one wants to blink first or admit that the Emperor has no clothes on ;)

Note there are some other reasons for the current model, like it makes you less susceptible to fluctuations in individual markets, and in the case of third countries it might make sense for all competitors to offer eg WAW-HKG flights at a discount if the local market won't bear higher fares.

But the "connecting flights have to be cheaper" argument is just a historical accident that airlines now have difficulties escaping from, and I genuinely think does them or their customers few favours...

It might make more sense, but I don't think you can take it as a given that you will make more money. The reason why it works is that in both markets you have people who are only prepared to pay ½X or ½Y and will put up with inconvenience to get to HKG, and people who are prepared to pay X or Y because they cannot put up with inconvenience to save money or are not prepared to put up with the inconvenience that saving ½X or ½Y would entail. If the airlines were to charge ¾X and ¾Y respectively without being able to carry the connecting passengers who will only pay ½X or ½Y and who simply will not travel if it costs more, the airlines would simply lose those passengers. That is why this pattern continues to exist.

It is very easy to construct other illustrations of apparent nonsenses in airline RM, such as the situations in which it's more profitable to fly an aircraft with empty seats than to fill every seat with lower fares.

...except that, in those days, fares were subject to government approval and therefore, if there were such bright sparks, their lights were dimmed pretty quickly by the relevant government refusing to approve fares that would undercut the "national champion" airline.

In truth, the current form of pricing does not date back to those days but rather to the emergence of hub and spoke network carrier model, which is more recent and largely linked to the greater degree of liberalisation in air transport.

Dual inventory fares noted. I think the YQ is a red herring - the fare/YQ balance to create the total fare will (should) have been achieved long ago. :)

The problem in this conversation is that logarithms are not alone. That means that you can never know. There is human intervention on a daily basis and logartihms logic stops being valid. That is why you will never come to one conclusion

It's easier to accept that airfares have no visible logic and just go with whatever works best for you. Looking for logic where there is none will make your brain hurt.

Surely that’s algorithms and not logarithms?

I recall a time, possibly as much as 40 years ago, when fares to long-haul destinations from the regions via London were the same as fares to the same destination from London. I also recall that in a period before the route was abandoned, the BA fare from MAN to JFK direct was more than the fare for MAN-LHR-JFK.

It also happens from time to time that the fare in CW for a particular flight is less than the WT+ fare for the same flight, and I have even seen the same situation between First and CW. On investigation, it usually turns out that the fare for the superior cabin has more restrictive conditions regarding changes and cancellations than the fare for the lower cabin. Presumably someone in BA understands when and why this happens.

I like the idea of revenue management sitting in a back room with their logarithm tables trying to optimize yield. No wonder things sometimes go a bit weird.