HIDDY

I suspect keeping domestic pax sweet won't be high on their agenda.

South London Bon Viveur

Do we have any figures on Corp travel? Is this information even captured by the airlines? It would be interesting to know.
Personally and anecdotally, there seems to have been quite a rebound in the last few months, although at the moment the majority of travellers do seem to be families on holiday, even at LHR. However I am cancelling some some non-urgent travel for the next few months, as I am wasting too much time in queues, waiting for bags etc. The airlines need to be careful not to p*ss off those that use them the most- some of us may be moving back to the Teams lounge!

tmac100

I am in Canada now. On my PNR I fly YYZ-LHR on Sept 12th with connector (on the morning of the 13th) LHR-KRK. THEN on a new PNR I fly (on Sept 20th) KRK-LHR connecting to LHR-LIS.
Does anyone see issues with these 3 shorthauls in Sept?

crazy8534

Very much so, the latest IAG interim results presentation has the data as it pertains to BA.

One thing is that I can’t see any good reason why BA’s strategy (right or wrong it may be) is going to change over the next few weeks, particularly given that the LHR capacity restrictions are, if anything, more stringent beyond August.

Shouldn’t anyone with even the most speculative travel plans for the rest of the year be booking flights now while they still can?

HIDDY

I personally think unless you really have no option but to travel you have to be foolhardy to fly anywhere at the moment. If you do, then please don't come on here and moan when it all goes wrong.

tmac100

In spite of your "advice" people moan anyways - even about meals and bevs served! Such is "entitlement" when flying and expecting "one's" standards to be met by BA.
As for me, I am particularly happy when the aircraft lands at the designated airport - even if later than ETA.

DaveS

You certainly are entitled to get what you pay for.

dcmike

I think part of the problem now is no one could answer this question with any certainty. If BA says you're booked and they're running right now, you're in a good place. But that doesn't mean they won't cancel closer to the date. Things should be getting better and the chances of a cancellation should be going down, but you also can't help but notice that the dates on this thread moved back a week over the past day.

corporate-wage-slave

It's a fair question, and I'm a bit surprised that there aren't similar concerns raised by other travellers. But those with existing bookings are actually more secure by these arrangements since obviously if you knock out a third of your passengers, it's much easier to run an efficient service for the other two thirds, which is precisely why this has happened. Plus you are currently out of scope time wise, it's August that HAL and BA are concentrating on. I guess if BA doesn't manage to get the numbers down then there could be more cancellations but if this was a serious concern then BA would have more generous rebooking conditions for people like you. At the moment people can get a voucher instead of travelling until 30 September, but can only get free rebooks until 7 August. The short answer is you should be OK and you may get more flexibility for a free change if you wait.

Schwann

Because they serve the cheapest crap that DoCo will let them stick their name on maybe?

TedToToe

Regarding your statement which I have made bold, why more stringent? Is the 100,000 limit reducing? Surely things should ease once the school holidays are over.

BONDY

Hi Hiddy,

I would actually turn this around a little and say. If you have to fly or, indeed, want to fly then have your backup plans ready and be prepared for disruption.

As an example, my partner and I were scheduled to fly in June from Israel (where she lives) to visit some friends of mine near Washington DC. I booked Tel Aviv to Heathrow to Washington. BA cancelled one of the daily Tel Aviv flights and re-booked the outbound to effectively make it a two day trip. I looked at options and found Tel Aviv to Madrid (Iberia) on a flat bed, Then to Heathrow on BA to pick up the original flight to Washington. That all worked well apart from the pretty standard 2 hour delay on the A380 to Washington!

The return was also re-booked by BA with a similar 2 day trip approach so I rebooked Washington to Charlotte (I had to return the car only to Washington Dulles), then to JFK (both American) then BA to Heathrow to pick up the early BA flight to Tel Aviv. A bag that was hand baggage on the way out was going to be checked on the way back (weight and liquids - shopping). Weather caused a delay to JFK so we missed the connection.

The lounge agent (who, incidentally seem to have a lot more power to "do" things than BA in person staff) was super helpful and I had planned for a misconnect so had a list of options which I gave him. None actually worked due to lack of available business seats to London but because I had put "El Al" in his mind as an option he found us a direct flight from Washington to Tel Aviv which got us in only 3 hours or so later than we would have been with BA. The bag never made the El Al flight but was delivered to my partner's house a few days later.

Luckily my partner understands the craziness of earning Tier Points and I had warned her anyway the bag had a good chance of not going with us the whole way. So all in all, the rebooking was quite painless, we got a decent option (original routing credit was applied within a few days) and because we were prepared for delays (both in our minds it might happen and with options) there was very little stress.

I have another trip coming up starting in Barcelona (well, London City to Barcelona initially) to a number of places around the US and I fully expect some issues but I have my "plan B and C" for the likely misconnects so I am quite relaxed about whatever happens. I will be firmly hand baggage only of course!!

And yes, I live in the UK and my other half lives in Israel and absence does make the heart grow fonder. I expect to spend 5-6 months a year there in the future but in "blocks" of 6 weeks at a time.

BONDY

HarryHolden68

Guardian newspaper now announcing BA will take active steps to manage short haul ticket sales until the end of the Summer in order to adhere to HAL passenger cap.

"After 15 August, the airline plans to restrict sales “dynamically” rather than with a blanket ban, but expects to continue to limit available seats for busier days and periods throughout the summer. It said the measures would protect existing bookings and help manage any disruption due to other factors, such as adverse weather or air traffic restrictions."

DaveS

I suppose “dynamically” = "jacking the price up".

orbitmic

To me it is still one of those cases where if you just look at everything with a magnifying glass and listen to the airline's and airport's arguments, you might say "yay that makes sense", but then the moment you start taking the least bit of distance to stop and think, it sounds either cretinous or bonkers or both.

The short term "makes sense" argument is: we have more pax than we can handle so surely, we need to self-regulate, accept fewer to limit the issues.

The distance "bonkers, cretinous or both" view is: there is no way in hell it can ever make sense for an airline claiming it faces difficult times to actively prevent people from buying expensive tickets in the biggest and most lucrative part of the year, no way in hell it can ever make sense that the right thing to do would be to fly planes with plenty of empty seats (which people want to buy), especially at a time when high energy prices and under-staffing means more movements with fewer people is the surest possible way to lose money and waste resources, no way in hell it can ever make sense to prolong uncertainty by moving the goal post every week, sometimes cancelling flights, others blocking some sales but not others, other perhaps blocking remaining sales, etc until dates that continuously change.

If it is a matter of insufficient resources, then maybe the only solution should have been to cancel some flights for the whole of the summer season - or even the whole of 2022 or whatever it takes to organise a proper recruitment campaign and training and try to pack those flights as much as possible rather than flying more of them with loads of empty seats. If it is a broader issue and BA can't handle being a big airline, then maybe they need to stop being a big airline, fire staff, close routes, and behave like a small airline and let someone else get their slots and have a go if they want.

However, call me stupid and incompetent if you must, but I cannot imagine under what theory it could ever make sense that the best solution to whatever current problems are being faced is to keep an almost full schedule of flights, block sales to keep them half empty, still have to cancel some as you haven't reduced movements and thus most of the non-passenger-elastic pressure on staff is still on (ie it takes the same number of gate agents, pilots, crew for an A320 to go whether it has 90 pax in and 80 empty seats or 170 pax) so that you still cannot handle what is left. I equally do not see under what theory it could possibly be a good solution to keep changing your strategy every few days (which apart from anything else, mobilises people designing those strategy ever bloody week) for good measure to ensure waste, communication issues (you ensure your problems remain front page paper material every bloody week too!), and of course consistently high levels of customers' dissatisfaction and distrust (which of us want to buy from an airline once we believe its behaviour is going to be unpredictable and unreliable every time a grain of sand makes it into the mechanism?). I can't help thinking that the current alliance of interests between BA and HAL effectively uses the worst possible incentive structure to foster the most inefficient types of operations possible, with as little structural response to the problems currently experienced as possible to ensure that the problems effectively risk persisting and reoccurring whilst shifting all of the uncertainty on the customers. Basically, it all sounds (very) wrong.