icegirl

I was referring more to the standard fare as opposed to sale or ex-EU.

2sk21

For what its worth, I'm paying for CW out of my own pocket for my US-India trip next month. Getting a genuine flat-bed at a reasonable price is worth a lot to me.

Often1

OP chose to fly BA and chose to connect when he had three nonstop options to TLV from NYC (which involves a 30-45 minute microhop or slightly longer train). Once you've put yourself through the wear & tear of a connection at LHR, what difference does it really make that the croissant aren't properly warmed or whatever it is?

FT01

It was porridge 😊

orbitmic

One of the most informative Ft posts I have seen in a long time. Thanks! ^

Among other things one notes:

- only 18 routes have three competitors or more
- the route with the biggest competition is LAX with 5 airlines competing
- of the 87 routes with competition, 9 only have 'competition' between airlines from IAG (e.g BA-IB or BA-EI etc) or from within the JV (BA-AA) and a further 5 only competition from within OW either with (AY, QR) or without (QF, RJ, Latam) codeshare, arguably limiting the competiton to 76 routes (I'm counting those without codeshare)

Lastly a small detail - Moscow is entered as one here, but in practice, most BA flights are into DME and the SU ones into SVO so those are not really competing (in many ways, LHR and LGW are a lot closer!)

JAXBA

Quote:

Originally Posted by moral_low_ground

Do you go to bed with your "eyeglasses" (how quaint). Do you cuddle your book in bed or put your phone under your pillow.

Cute.

Myself, I do go to bed with my glasses. I put them on my side table, and know where they'll be when I reach for them blindly. The equivalent placement in the CW seat would be to balance them on the central armrest, but that's too insecure, so I use the Elemis bag string trapped over the TV screen trick myself, so at least I know where they are.

If one doesn't have a spare string bag though, there isn't anywhere safe to put glasses except in the drawer, which isn't accessible when the bed is flat. That just doesn't work for the visually challenged…

shuly

OP here. Thank you all for your comments. I thought I'd provide some context.

This trip was TLV-NYC-PIT-WAS-TLV, all in J. The best fares were on AA; at least $500 less than the competition. Now AA doesn't fly to TLV, so you can choose a feeder flight to Europe on LY, BA or IB. I chose IB outbound, BA inbound for schedule reasons mainly. Mind you, there's a lot of competition on the Israel-US market: LY, UA and DL fly direct (usually about $1000 more expensive), and then BA, IB, LX, LH, AF, KL, AZ, TK, RJ, SN, LO, AC, and many, many more with a single stop. I could have taken AF/KL/AZ for a few hundred dollars more; I opted for IB/BA because the price was right, I haven't flown them for many years, I wanted to try the new A350 that Iberia recently introduced and I wanted to fly on a single ticket rather than combine a transatlantic one with a few domestic trips.

More context: I've travelled transatlantic J on TK, LH, LX and RJ in the last two years; and EK first long-haul recently. I'm a seasoned traveller and I understand that there are always some inconsistencies and that s**t happens. Having said that, the last two BA segments were the poorest I had in recent years.

My main complaint is the hard product. These aircraft are old. This means poorer air quality (than, say, RJ's new 787 or IB's 350), and a much noisier trip. Especially if, seated at the back of J as I was, you're behind the engines (I don't recall seeing a wing out of my window in years. Surely not the back side of a wing). Of course it's nicer if you get an upper deck seat on the 747; I didn't (none was available when I booked, and certainly not when I checked in). I had a window seat (in the last row of J) on the transatlantic flight: it was indeed private but it was narrow, with no storage space whatsoever (I refuse to put personal items where other people store their shoes; call me pedantic), and, as mentioned, noisy. I had an aisle seat in the last row of J on the daytime flight, just on everybody's way to the lavatories. And I was lucky: the thought of finding myself in the so-called honeymoon seats rubbing shoulders with a stranger, where there is NO divider, was horrendous. And it could very well happen, as both my flights were full in J.

As for the service: of course I can use the button and summon a flight attendant. Some airlines have attendants that notice your empty glass and pro-actively top it off. I'm sure BA does too, I was probably just unlucky with relatively lazy crews. And poorly trained, too: I believe that serving cognac with ice is unacceptable even in the UK, is it not? And serving it in a wine glass is a double sin? But really, this isn't the issue at all: it's the hard product that I disliked.

These are all first-world problems. Given the competition, I will likely take my custom elsewhere in the near future, but will keep an eye open for improvements on BA.

Safe travels,

Shuly

shuly

Ah... Someone who understands...

Shuly

orbitmic

I know what you mean, but I don't think that it is what most of us understood by the comment so perhaps it could have been a bit clearer? I also think that this is a bit of a tricky argument to make. Sometimes, a return between, say, LHR and NCE can be bought for £80, other times for £700. You can get some promotional long haul J fares for £1200 indeed, but on the same route you could pay £5000 very easily, and PE could cost anywhere from about £500 to well over £3000. Prices and cabins do overlap, largely because they come with their idiosyncratic markets, conditions, and much more.

I mean in sales, a couple of years ago, QR - with its excellent J product - sold tickets to lots of destinations including CPT and SIN for about £600 or to Australia for just a notch above £1000. Would you call QR J the "best economy class" because those are clearly frequent (discounted) Y prices to those destinations?

shuly

The dreaded connection at LHR was the least problematic. I had 65 minutes and even managed a quick shower between the flights.

The direct flight route was only possible on TLV-JFK (not on WAS-TLV) and was way more expensive, even when you forget about the domestic segments.

Shuly

londonsean69

I fly for leisure, and pay out of my own pocket. I wouldn't pay full fare for BA CW. Sale, yes. Ex-EU, yes. Avios, definitely yes.
I'm not 100% tied to BAEC, I will look at other options if they work better for me.

Case in point, I am doing LHR-FRA-DEL next year, via ZRH on the way back, with Lufthansa and Swiss (all in Biz). BA was £750 in WT, £3275 in CW.
LH had it up at £1200, I got it through Expedia at £1006

I am lucky in that my travel dates and destinations are flexible, hence I can shop around and go for an ex-EU, or transit via 'somewhere'.

All of my BA CW flights have unfortunately been on 777-200, and they are pretty tired, and generally grubby. It's better than being down the back, but it rarely feels like a premium product.

Lucanesque

I regularly get a £1,500 LHR-JFK, not flying ex-EU, but I get your point... would I think they were great value at £2,500 maybe less so, at £4k (what I've paid CW to SIN before), begrudgingly.

Oxon Flyer

People on this forum would be so much happier if people on this forum would quit posting about “people on this forum”.

corporate-wage-slave

Thanks for reverting, and that's a fair summary above, other airlines/aircraft will work better for you. I suspect a UD seat would have changed matters somewhat. But in terms of improvements, the key one to come up is the new direct service LHR-PIT, which will be on a 787. Something like TLV-PIT with several changes is a tiring exercise, but made worse by dry air and excess noise, so certainly a big chunk of it being on a 787 or 380 will improve matters there no end. Getting status on BA or AA would also help on decent seat selection, at Gold level I can't recall not getting UD, it's always magically there for me even though I'm very late to book.

muscat