Misco60

But BA will have customers, once all this craziness is over. And those customers will undoubtedly be willing to pay more for those flights to Antigua than you were hoping to snap them up for. It's super simple.

mikeyfly

I've read through plenty of the OP's rants over time - however this one is absurd. BA most certainly does not have zero customers, I imagine it has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of future customer bookings sat in it's system. Up until a month ago it was transporting almost one million customers per week.

Scots_Al

The thing is, it won’t just be the OP who has had the thought that, once we get through all this, it would be great to have a winter break in the Caribbean. I suspect a lot of people who have the means for that, and who are in relatively secure employment have had similar thoughts - certainly my wife said something similar to me a couple of weeks ago. So, if things really are back up and running by then, there will be a mini boom of sorts (just as there will be for the pubs and restaurants that survive), and if BA is not desperate for your cash right now, it would then be proven right not to have sold off its ability to cash in on that boom.

Bear96

Pilots can do that in simulators much more cheaply than in real aircraft.

rockflyertalk

Yes, it’s an interesting one Re: pricing post Cv-19. (Sorry I may be about to derail the thread but I think the OP has has some sound advice).

My parents want to travel to Spain as soon as is possible and are worried that, should they wait to a reasonable point in time when things start to return to normal, fares will increase pretty quickly or potentially increase dramatically overnight.

So should they book now for say a date in June and hope that it all works out or worse case rebook. I won’t tell you my reaction when they suggested they might book for a few weeks time! Along the lines of...What planet are you living on?!

Anyway it got me thinking about fares in general and what the price graph might look like. Fares are been falling (forcefully) for a number of years, when we look at EU flights and the fierce competition between BA, U2 and FR. It’s served the general public well in terms of getting cheap fares to 100’s of destinations. Then there is the BA vs DY vs VS North America fight and we now have fares to the likes of NY for as little as £220-40.

Will see the return of these this year or will these fares be resigned to the history books and post CV-19 will be a very different pricing chart??

What happened post 9/11? I was a mere teen so my memory of airline prices is understandably non-existent

No one has a crystal ball I get that but it’s interesting when aviation has ever experienced this level of crisis. I hope that fares do stay competitive and we can still all access flying.

Tiger_lily

Following the 2008 crash there were lots of sub £1k fares to be had to the US. I’m not sure this crisis will generate the same sort of result.

Mountlodge

In 2016 (booked Dec 2015) I got Business Class DUB-LHR-LAX-HNL-LAX-LHR-DUB for £947:00 direct from the AA website. I originally spotted it on Matrix then went straight to the AA website and booked it. Still to this day I find it hard to believe I got the good a price.

ML

Swanhunter

Agree - so much capacity has been/is being withdrawn whereas in 2008 many more planes were kept flying. Am sure there will be bargains, but perhaps not so many.

HIDDY

What is the price difference? Did you get a bargain price on the one that's had to be cancelled?

I always expect everything to be more expensive next year....then again I'm living here where 40% annual inflation is commonplace.

orbitmic

The thread topic is not strange, but the OP's assumptions are.

The first assumption is that when your business is down, you should sell things at any price and that will bring more customers onboard. That's completely wrong. Not many people would be buying new holidays (at any point in time) right now given the ambient uncertainty, so lowering the prices likely means that the same people will buy but will give you less for what they purchase.

Second, the OP seems to ignore the fact that BA has functioned like a "central bank" in recent weeks by issuing tonnes of vouchers for people who chose to cancel their travel plans. It is all the stranger to ignore it that it seems to at least partly echo the OP's own situation (whether he is using a voucher or not). The time you issue money (here vouchers) is not the time to offer bargain prices for people to spend it on. Thousands of customers are currently voucher rich and need to use their vouchers within a year of their original travel plans. If BA has absolutely no incentive to make it easy for them to spend them and get a lot for their money (and in terms of BA holidays, they do not control the price of the hotel/car parts). it is better for people that BA keep the vouchers or need to add more cash to spend them and if they "forget" to use them for a full year and lose the value it is (cynically) even better yet.

So if the OP is indeed indirectly holding IAG shares through his/her pension plan, (s)he should be happy that IAG are not making it easy for customers to get great bargains for their many vouchers as lowering prices would just get BA vouchers back (not cash) and force it to make uncertain long term commitments in return.

Once the situation clarifies, they will undoubtedly aim to restart sales asap and possibly offer good offers to support this.

g289t

You're talking a year out here. They have one year to get customers between now and then. It's not a problem to not have customers now for that date.

Joeykins

There seems to be some classic BA IT issue happening with fares. I was doing some speculative pricing for LHR/MAN-IAD/BWI/DCA in January. On the "choose your flights" screens for J the outbounds were showing up at around £700 and the returns at around £500, but then when I get to the flight summary screen with the final quote the price is coming in at just under £5k.

Often1

Air carriers learned during the last financial crisis that cutting fares to the bones to generate passenger count was a terrible mistake. If there is no traffic at a reasonable PRASM, capacity, rather than fares, will be cut. The problem today is that nobody knows what the market for leisure travel to any particular destination will be. Some suggest that it mat take 2-3 years for the leisure markets to come back and others believe that it will bounce back quickly.

In that environment one can't reliable engage in inventory and revenue management, so one does not. Better to leave only the high fare buckets and open lower ones later than the reverse.

OP is not "throwing BA a bone." Rather. he is seeking a better deal than might well be appropriate.

kingcole974

I totally understand the OP’s point of view here. I was also booked on a BA holiday to travel in 10 days time. I got it all refunded but I’d rather have rebooked for a date in the future. My reasons are the same as OP. I still want to do the holiday and BA need my cash right now.

This isn’t about supply and demand. It’s about the fact I spent £4300 on my trip in April yet at no point between July and March next year can I book the same itinerary for less than £6,000. This is for 2 in F for a fly drive over 9 days, Out to BNA and back from IAH.

If they were able to offer this price in December when COVID-19 wasn’t a word, why can’t they now. At OP also rightly pointed out, It’s me taking the risk in case they fail.

rapidex

There is not enough simulator time available to carry out the training task.