samw

When will BA catch up with their low fare competition (easyjet) and realise that there is a difference between people who need a fully flexible ticket and people who arrive at the airport a couple of hours before their booked flight and would like to catch an earlier flight on standby?

Easyjet charge nothing for the privilege of switching to an early flight on spec at the airport. BA charge a change fee plus the difference in fare. This is a positive differentiation for easyjet.

It is also a a missed revenue opportunity. I could not justify buying a flexible ticket on the offchance that I might get to the airport a couple of hours early. I definately could not justify the change fee and upgrade to fly a couple of hours earlier. I would however be prepared to pay just a change fee to catch an earlier flight. I would then also be a much happier customer.

House

The dilemma for BA is that a lot of their large corporate customers, some spending GBP15 to 20 million+ every year with the airline, will happily pay for the more expensive (often a lot more expensive) flexible ticket rather than risk having staff stuck at the airport for hours because their meeting finishes early.

For example, earlier this year I went to Verona for a couple of days with work (I didn't quite believe it at first either...). Booked the ticket one week before travel I could either have booked a return ticket in economy for around £190 return, or a flexible economy ticket for over £700 return (it may have been a bit more). There were two flights back to LGW, at lunchtime and at 8pm, and I booked on the later one to make sure. Similarly there was sme uncertainty over whether I would be able to make the earlier of the two daily departures from LGW. As far as my corporate travel agent was concerned, the sensible thing was to book the flexible ticket.

The client I was travelling with bought a non-flexible ticket. Of course we finished hours early and were able to get the earlier flight back. I changed for free, while my client had to buy a new walk-up Club Europe ticket (all they had left). The client ended up spending as much as I did.

If you allow easy same day changes then companies will soon wake up to this and the result, on key business routes at least, would be thousands of pound in lost revenue per flight.

One day the custom they lose to easyjet for this inflexibility may cost them more in revenue than the additional flexible fare sales they will lose if they choose to follow easyjet. Until then I suspect nothing will be changing!

clubman

Only, he traveled in CE while you traveled at the back.

Flying Doctor

I suspect that this 'apparent freebie' from Easyjet will not last that long. As soon as people become aware of this everyone will book the last flight back and then turn up early and change it. This will screw up Easyjets revenue planning as they (even more than BA) need to guarantee a high load factor on each flight to break even. They will end up with flights going empty.

House

A quick comment to the check-in agent at VRN to that effect extracted an upgrade to CE - middle seat but wasn't complaining! It was opera season and the flight was oversold in ET from what I could see...

ant_west

I'm not sure this is quite what you meant....

you spent £700 from day 1 but could go on any flight
client spends £200 on day 1 but when meeting ends early finds he has to spend additional £500 to get on early flight (in CE).

So you both spend same amount and get on same flights (in same class with an upgrade for you)

However if the flight finished as expected, you would have spent £700 and your client only £200. I can't see how we was penalised for not buying the flexibility in advance! (I suspect you meant that he ended up spending more than you... )

clubman

samw, you started this thread both here and in the BMI forum why exactly?

aisle seat c

bmi and BA both fly to airports where businessmen travel i.e LHR not STN or LTN, therefore their costs are higher, it is these same business men that subsidise the lower fares by buying fully flexible tickets. It is only fair that someone on a lower fare be expected to pay the difference in the fare for the same type of flexibility.

Why should they allow passengers who have paid £25.99 for their ticket the same flexibility as passengers who have paid £161.50 for their ticket?

It is infact a lost revenue opportunity for Easy as they are not charging the difference in fare and only charge a small change fee to anyone turning up early no matter what fare has been paid, thus making a loss on what could be a seat on an earlier flight that could be selling for a much higher fare than the passenger paid in the first place.

If a passenger wants flexibility then they have to opportunity to buy a flexible ticket, if a passenger wants to buy a cheap ticket then that too is their own choice. If you want to be a 'happier customer' then why not just read the terms and conditions and fare rules of your ticket before you buy it? Then you will know exactly what you will be entitled to flexibility/standby wise. If you are happy with them, then buy the ticket, not happy with them then don't buy it, its that simple. Then you would be happier and less annoyed when the airport staff apply the fare rules of your ticket in the way that they should be applied because you are aware of what to expect from the ticket you have chosen to buy.

In the states most US carriers allow standby etc to any passenger on any type of ticket......just take a look at the losses they are making..chapter 11 springs to mind.....

LiviLion

Nope, zero charge for changing to an earlier flight on the return leg, only a small change fee if you turn up late within 2 hours of the scheduled departure and move onto a later flight.

chippy63

House,
You wrote:
[I]For example, earlier this year I went to Verona for a couple of days with work (I didn't quite believe it at first either...). Booked the ticket one week before travel I could either have booked a return ticket in economy for around £190 return, or a flexible economy ticket for over £700 return (it may have been a bit more). There were two flights back to LGW, at lunchtime and at 8pm, and I booked on the later one to make sure. Similarly there was sme uncertainty over whether I would be able to make the earlier of the two daily departures from LGW. As far as my corporate travel agent was concerned, the sensible thing was to book the flexible ticket. [/I

Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't you have bought 2 x £190 tickets, and had the same flexibility for yor return? Saving of £320. Just curious.

redshift27

How happy is BA with double-booking, though? Like back-to-back ticketing, it is frowned upon by the airlines. One can understand a corporate TA being leary of doing this.

samw

The examples illustrates the fact that since BA & bmi have been forced to offer flexibility on virtually all short haul fares (for the cost of a change fee plus upgrade to the cheapest available fare) the purchase of fully flexible tickets over a super cheap economy ticket is no longer generally rational. The caveats are where a) there is an extremely high likelihood of having to make a change; b) there is a chance that you might have to cancel the booking or change routing; c) your travel agent gets away with booking you on multiple alternative flights. House identified that "The client ended up spending as much as I did" (but no more) however there is a chance that he could have paid less. Any statistician would tell you that in the long term the client pays less.

As we have established that the customer is not necessarily price conscious and rational then the airline could seek to maximise revenue from price conscious customers. Obviously this is a balancing act as you could tip the differential so far that formally price unconscious customers stop buying flexible tickets. I will leave this to BA's economists. I see that they have recently made a similar move with £50 Club Europe upgrades from Gatwick (I'm afraid I am too price conscious for those).

I was interested in aisle seat c's comment that "It is only fair that someone on a lower fare be expected to pay the difference in the fare for the same type of flexibility. Why should they allow passengers who have paid £25.99 for their ticket the same flexibility as passengers who have paid £161.50 for their ticket?" I would argue that it is competition. Previously BA & bmi have got away with charging high fares for flexible tickets as there was little competition. If you argue that easyjet & BA do not compete because they fly from different airports then how do you account for the major changes that have been made to age old practices since the advent of low cost carriers?

I posted this post to both BA & bmi forums because I thought it was relevant to both carriers. I regularly travel with both carriers and I have the same issue with both. I wanted to guage opinion from both sets of travellers. Sorry if I broke the rules. How should I get input from readers of both forums?

In relation to the comment that this is a lost revenue opportunity for easyjet. I am surprised they did it too. I am quite confident that they did the maths first though. Maybe if they accept a passenger at the last minute for one flight they know that they can not sell any more on that flight but they could resell the seat on a later flight.

Land-of-Miles

Is allowing PAX to stand by for an earlier flight really that much of a lost revenue opportunity? I would assume that PAX with fully flexible tickets would always take priority over others (even Golds etc.) on cheapies. There is thus no guarantee of being able to change flight, and this cannot be pre-arranged on the phone before travelling to the airport (something I ALWAYS do when changing my fully flexible tickets). The flexible ticket holder retains maximum flexibility and has first bite at the available seats.

If there are 10 PAX waiting for a 16:00 flight but willing to travel on a flight at 14:30. and that 14:30 flight has 20 unsold seats, isn't it in both the interest of the PAX and airline to allow those PAX on the earlier flight (once all bookings have closed and other standby PAX accomodated). This allows the airline a further bite at selling the seats on the later flight (which it would have been otherwise unable to do).

I have lost count of the times I have travelled on restricted domestic ticket and arrived at the airport early. Once I used to ask about availability on earlier flights but after receiving the brush off several times, I now just sit and drink more at BA's expense, only later to find myself on a fully sold out flight (which presumably would have enabled BA to sell my seat at many times the price I paid for it, had I been allowed to switch flights). When travelling on leisure there is no way I would even pay £35 for a switch in timing of one leg of a journey, so this is not diluting the revenue mix .

When travelling on business, my clients pay the cost 90% of the time. I generally have no incentive to book anything less than a flexible ticket since this ensures that I receive full mile and status credit (on whichever airline I fly), and it makes the task of flexing the ticket easier. It is much easier to bill a client for a flexible ticket than to bill them for a semi-flexible ticket plus appropriate change and upgrade fees. My booking practices would not alter if there were more flexibility to standby for earlier flights at the airport.

I think the automatic assumption that customers would ditch fully flexible tickets en masse, because an airline adopted some flexibility at the airport is just wrong. If this happened is seems the effects would only be felt at the margin, and would be offset by new business resulting from the policy change. I actually think EZ have been very smart here and it will be interesting to see the effect upon their revenue mix over time. Finally don't forget all those who said if one way tickets were available at the same price as half a return, it would lead to similar revenue dilution etc. etc. One way pricing as pioneered by EZ et al is becoming the norm and airlines are not folding as a result.

House

Travel agent believes that BA won't like this and has way too much business with BA to disagree. More generally, corporate travel agents tend not to be that imaginative and the companies involved are rarely that price sensitive.

Most colleagues have remarkably little knowledge of the options available - the main concern is usually whether the specific client involved has authorised Business Class travel or not. There is a travel policy, the travel agent knows it, and if that means spending lots of money on last minute tickets then so be it.

bealine

They do this in the USA (indeed, Continental allow International pax to change to an earlier flight "on the day" as well).

The result is an enormous amount of lost ticketing revenue for US carriers. To recover from 09/11 took them 5 years, whilst BA (which was almost bankrupted) recovered within the year, and whilst Rod Eddington's leadership had a lot to do with it, a large portion of the bounceback was due to the fastidious collection of change fees, excess baggage penalties and closing of "cross border" ticketing loopholes!

I feel that the day will dawn when we have to go the same route and allow changes "on the day", but only when we're dragged kicking and creaming into it!