BrianDromey

BA do seem to be keeping aircraft as full as possible. But fares on many routes, even with 7-10 days notice are still much lower than I would expect. I agree cancelling frequencies can be inconvenient. I’ve taken to booking around 10-14 days in advance, when the schedule seems relatively stable.

IAG say all current flying is cash positive. The strategy seems to be fly fewer, fuller aircraft. If they wanted more seats they could have reactivated the A321ceo fleet instead of A319s and A320s.

flyertalker28120

Unfortunately, most carriers do.

:D!

I recently went to Germany with BA, out Monday back Thursday.

I booked this a week ahead. The cheapest economy fares were £400 outbound and €700 inbound. Both of them had "only X left" where X was something like 2 or 3.

However, at least 9 RFS seats were available on both flights so I just used Avios. (Incidentally this 10p per avios rate is my best ever, although not a genuine saving - had RFS not been available I would have found alternative dates, or accepted that I would need to quarantine on return by going through a neighbouring country).

Both flights turned out to be about 40% full, so I am still confused as to why BA was charging ridiculous prices yet leaving avios availability wide open. I guess getting £400 from one passenger is better than £50 from 8 passengers, but I doubt BA cares about trying to leave seats empty to aid social distancing.

Fares to and from all the German airports that BA was still serving were all similarly high. There was very little chance of Germany being added to the UK quarantine lists, so it wasn't like BA was trying to capitalise on a rush to return either.

flyertalker28120

Sounds like revenue management alive and well again. As you suggested, it's better for BA to extract full value from business pax with a high willingness to pay than to sell a few extra seats but lose a ton of value from the business pax. At very short notice, you were looking for an outbound on Monday and a return on Thursday the same week. Well, that's matches profile of a prototypical corporate traveller 100 percent.

As for the crowded planes issue: I have suggested in different contexts it would be nice if airlines triggered the equipment change to the next-larger model (say A319 -> A320 or A320 -> A321) just a little earlier to facilitate social distancing.

Don't get me wrong, guys, I know the incremental cost of switching to the larger aircraft can be quite big. But I'm not saying give every flight 15% more seat capacity. No, I'm saying do a gradual adjustment of the threshold that triggers the equipment change. E.g., if the usual threshold for changing to larger equipment is 130 ticketed pax x hours before departure, move the threshold to, say, 125 ticketed pax x hours before departure.

Confus

You were unlucky. A friend of mine is doing the reverse this week (Germany > UK and back), bought last week for €90 return.

bavarian1992

Agreed. There are some low prices out there. One month out LHR - MUC and PSA - LHR in Club for £200 return. Unbeatable.

lcylocal

I have been keeping half an eye on some flights to Stuttgart in October. Sometime this week they seemed to go from about £100 return to closer to £200. I think what happened was that BA removed a rotation and also cancelled the Saturday flights entirely so lower classes on the outbound disappeared. I would guess that they actually might reappear and the price could drop back a bit again as the algorithm catches up.

Akoz

With BA deciding not run LGW-EDI flights next year and Easyjet announcing that they will restart LGW-ABZ route in May 2021, any slight hope I had that BA might takeover LGW-ABZ has evaporated.

As a result I have resigned myself to the knowledge that I will not be maintaining status any longer as EDI and ABZ make up my weekly flights. While I would prefer to fly BA - Given my location in the south east, LGW is always my first choice rather then humping round the M25 and have to allow an extra hour or so to get to LHR.