HIDDY

apocryphal.....''(of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.''

Sounds about right if it was posted on FT.

DeathSlam

Yes, but that assumes the problem is being looked at as an engineer. It isn't.
Because of the way people who make business decisions are incentivised (explictly and implicitly) short term revenue gain will always come out on top against robustness and longevity. The (not entirely unreasonable) assumption is that getting profits tomorrow is somebody else's problem and they may then have a better hack than you do now. It's not a way of working I agree with, but sadly I'm afraid it is ubiquitous and there's no point trying to convince anyone to do anything else. (At least not until the revolution).

PxC

There have been posts on here lately than BA have been denying legit ORC requests, before anyone takes it for granted.

13901

Indeed, having one or two hubs isn't an engineering problem. It's an issue of demand.
There is no way the UK can have two major LHR-like hubs, there just isn't the demand for it. There's no scenario where you can have two LHRs - both of them with tens of thousands of employees and flights - in the UK, especially if one is to act as a 'standby hub' in case the other goes offline. The only country in Europe that has two hubs is Germany, and even in that case MUC is very much second fiddle to FRA.

DeathSlam

Sure, i.e. an economics problem. The goal is to make money not serve passengers as individual people or as a population. Not all countries take the same approach (e.g China) [puts on flame proof suit]

Erwin10

And these two Lufthansa hubs are fed by a network of multiple airlines from multiple major European cities (which is why it's Lufthansa group). Two hubs work, but usually this involves multiple airlines as part of one group (eg AMS/CDG for AF-KLM or Lufthansa Group with its several group hubs). For just BA in the UK it indeed is not gonna work, apart from some specific leisurely routes from LGW.

1P

I know this has little to do with BA short-haul, but I recently flew LHR-YVR and back in biz, both routes that BA flies non-stop.

I went with Air Canada non-stop. I simply didn't want to risk delays, cancellation, bags not arriving, etc.

Both my AC flights arrived early. (The BA equivalents both arrived over an hour and 20 minutes late). My bags arrived safely, and my baggage allowance was better than BA's. I didn't have to pay extra to select my seat, nor Mrs 1P's seat. (Come on, BA!) The food and wine were excellent.

It would be really good to fly with BA, but at the moment I can't see myself taking that option. This latest news about short-haul flights until 8 August is bad news. No doubt it will be extended. In fact it's probably for the best, given that BA can't even maintain its current operation in any coherent form. Is another change at the top due?

firstlight

I tend to agree. Speaking as that 'bucket and spade ggl' (tongue in cheek thread title), it's not the cost of living as much as the cost of BA Holidays and BA flights putting us off. For example, a luxury holiday we have just booked to Mauritius for 2023 was 14K on BA Holidays, we've got it for £7.5k cash, 19.5k net avios, 2 guf1s, a companion voucher and a joker. A year ago that same holiday would have been 10k in all. While there are people with infinite money who can cope with a 40% increase that isn't us. We assume that the current surge pricing will disappear, lower fare buckets will once again be available and things will go back more to normal; but with a higher proportion of leisure travellers than maybe there were before covid.

orbitmic

In a nutshell: no. Time and again, being the London airline has kept BA alive when it could have otherwise gone through some extremely rough fortunes.

If the idea is to stop being a hub airline or go multi-hubs, then BA will stop being a major, a significant number of routes will stop being viable, and interest in BA as a partner from various corners of the world will go down dramatically.

If it is to move to a non-London hub then I have no doubt a number of other airlines will be ready to crack open the Champagne and volunteer to replace BA as the new London hub.

Either way, my guess is that BA will be a lot worse off than it currently is. So on the contrary, I'd stay put in London as firmly as I can if I were them...

13901

Well, it's been a while since I looked at China's airline setup in detail but I seem to remember that the various hubs (PEK, CAN, PVG and to a lesser extent Chengdu, Xi'an and others) are sort of divvied up between the various big players. I might be wrong, but Air China seems to me to be focussing on PEK, Southern on Guanzhou, Eastern on PVG and so on. Had the UK been as big I guess we could have London Airways over at LHR, FakeTan Airlines at Gatwick, Jocks Aloft in Glasgow, Geordie Airways at NCL, Brummies Worldwide in BHX and the Scousers would be stealing Mancunian Airways' wheels overnight.

Now, can you lend me that flame proof suit of yours?

tjcxx

Come on, give us the rest... BHD, CWL, and most importantly, SEN...?

AJA_

I may be wrong but doesn't IAG operate two hubs? BA from LHR and IB from MAD? And technically a smaller 3rd hub being Aer Lingus out of DUB? And BA partners with AA, Finnair and IB on the transatlantic joint business which will be expanded to include Aer Lingus when it eventually becomes a full OW member and a similar approach seems to be developing with Qatar Airways on routes via DOH So while BA itself appears to concentrate on LHR and seems to be dropping lots of routes you can still book on BA flight numbers as codeshares on other OW metal to many of its former direct destinations (KUL on MH for instance).

orbitmic

Well, you can add BCN (Vueling) and till recently JNB (Comair)! But IAG is not an airline, it is a group, just like the LH group has various airlines with hubs in FRA, MUC, BRU, WAW, VIE, ZRH, DUS, etc, and AF KL airlines which hubs are at CDG, AMS and ORY.

None of these groups has ever wanted to merge airlines (the closest to it was AF KL but it still stayed well clear), so each keeps its own hubs. There is of course value in interconnecting them to benefit from network complementarity, not least in the case of IAG because BA is outside of the EU whilst partners like IB are in, but connectivity notwithstanding, they remain separate airlines with separate strategies, services, and managements.

TheJayHatch

I’m a bit late to this thread but not to the story: currently facing a number of business issues driven by monetary and political issues, but am unable to easily travel. I have always said that Zoom etc are perfect for day to day, but new business and difficult business are best dealt with in person. Yet here I am. Not impressed - at least last week I could get last mi Ute full price fares!

AJA_

I wasn't suggesting that IAG is an airline. I agree that the airlines all operate as independent entities. That to my mind is sensible. I raised the point more to suggest why BA doesn't open a second hub elsewhere in the UK like LH does in Germany. The point being it doesn't need to. It already has several hubs albeit geographically spread across western Europe via group airlines within IAG. And each of them is even more interconnected with the shared FF currency of Avios which has expanded to include Qatar Airways and its hub at DOH allowing you to create connected itineraries on any of the group airlines.