From what I've read U2 do now overbook. Though tales of being bumped are pretty rare.

U2 seem to have a pretty good offering overall. Other than the free seating and that you have to pay for the catering, is the offering really that different from BA's ET offering?

Out of mild curiosity, who are U2?. I thought Easyjet's flight code designator was EZ or EZY.

Absolutely! Call it a business package, charge £30+ for it and bundle in well policed priority boarding, access to a BAA or whatever lounge and priority luggage (not that baggage handlers at UK airports respect this). There are plenty of ways to get extra bits of money out of people for things they value but few of the LCCs seem to exploit this simple fact of human nature.

They may prefix their flights with EZ, but their IATA code is U2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyJet

Ah, OK ^

I know it is OT but how / why are some of these allocated that does not tie in easily as an acronym to the airlines name?. Ones such as BA, AC, AA, AF etc make perfect sense but WN for Southwest, U2 for Easyjet, VS for Virgin and FR for Ryanair seem designed to make life more complicated than it needs to be :confused:

100% agree. I would willingly fork out extra (say £30-£50) to get an allocated seat in advance and be allowed to board in the first wave to guarantee to get my bag in the o/h locker rather than under the seat in front. Include a free soft drink or coffee and sandwich as well and the airline would still be making >90% margin on the incremental charges.

In the days of CRS, OLCI etc, the seat allocation part should have a zero incremental cost to the LCC - they seem to be missing an opportunity to charge more to the pax who are perfectly willing to pay for it.

...you have BA's offering? Well, in theory. Except the penny-pinching idiots who do not see the bigger picture and only take note of the lowest headline-grabbing price their minute attention spans can comprehend (i.e. the wider travelling public), don't seem to get this. The constant ridiculous drive to the lowest possible headline price is what drags the rest of us down screaming in the race to the bottom too - those of us who are willing to pay for extras don't even get the chance...

Generally because someone has already got the code the airline would have preferred - by using only a two character identifier, IATA greatly limits the number of airlines which have codes, and its kind of first come first served - so all the legacy airlines have the codes they wanted, but most of the newer airlines have to use anything which is left, which may or may not be anything to do with their name. Codes get recycled too when airlines go to the wall, there is such a shortage of them! Can make looking at historic data interesting if airlines are identified by IATA code, as you have to remember what years some of the major airlines died.

I see your point and I will always fly BA in Europe whenever I can. But sometimes their prices are so many orders higher than U2 (EZ :) ) that I could not justify the difference for what is basically an allocated seat as the only real difference. An example - I needed to go to GVA at about 3 days notice last June. BA were about £350 return - but that price was also at a ridiculously inconvenient return time that meant I would have to wait 3 or so hours in GVA. To return at a convenient time to me with BA was about £420 IIRC.

U2 was about £120 IIRC for the same itinerary and the timings were much better. My point is that if there had been an option to pay £30-£50 more with U2 for an allocated seat, guaranteed A group boarding and an inclusive drink / snack then I would have paid it with zero hesitation.

Answering my own post here :eek: but another example is I need to go to Berlin next Tuesday, returning Wednesday. BA wants a whopping £680 for a 90 minute return economy flight (yes, I also had to look twice at that - I mean .......??) whilst with U2 it comes to £98 total whichever timings or routes I take. BA has 4 daily flights, so does U2 if you include both LGW and LTN.

Now can I live without a measly "deli box" and a non-allocated seat for the sake of £580?. Ummmmm yes, I think I can :)

I'd love to fly with BA all the time, but given my usual routes of GLA-STN, GLA-CWL, GLA-BHD etc it's just not an option open to me. However, I can also appreciate from a business aspect why so many companies now dont want their staff travelling on BA (or BD) when they can get flights on the major routes for so much cheaper. BOH shows a single example here where switching carriers on the same route would save £580. So, for that saving, you could buy yourself a priority pass premium for £259 (or pay the £300 fee on your Amex platinum charge card and get it for free, plus an extra one for your suplimentary cardholder) so you can have lounge access while flying on the LCC's, buy 15,000 ba miles from the BAEC website (£255) and still have enough left for a meal and a good few drinks at the airport. Crazy stuff.

Efin

True. Sometimes there are also historical explanations caused by the merger or takeover of airlines, or simply by changes of name. So BMI for example use the identifier BD, because they at one stage operated as [British] Derby Airways. And Swiss use LX because the airline used to be called Crossair, and the German word for "air" is "Luft" (the old Swissair SR code disappeared when SR folded a few years back).

Then there are the rival three letter identifiers used by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (which are used on passenger displays at Spanish airports, for example). These can differ totally from the IATA code:

BA=BAW (British AirWays)
BD=BMA (British Midland Airways)
EZ=EZY
IB=IBE
LX=SWR (Swiss - they salvaged the old Swissair ICAO code)

BOH,

did exactly the same last week. Took the kids to Cirque Du Soleil in Berlin, out on the 1st and back on the 4th. 2 adults and 2 kids on any BA flight was £1800, and with EZY was £467.

BA fly into TXL which is not that much closer than EZY into Schoenefeld.

Good points of EZY

Price
Reasonably efficient
On time

Bad Points

Scrum at check in (no queue mgt and I picked the Q with the transvestite who chose to have a 20 min argument!!!)
They ran out of beer (and food, except the awful soup)!!! The stewardess asked me what it was with the Brits that we buy stuff on board. If she flies Berlin to Pisa then she said she could read the Bible, but LGW-Berlin she sells everything in sight.

For the price and the service you can't knock it. But I guess if BA get people to pay the £685 then good luck.

FYI, taxi from Shoenefeld into town is about 35 Euros, or you can take the train and get out at the Zoo (Zoological Gardens) and then try and figure out the Berlin subway system (makes you realise how wonderful the London Underground Map really is!)

I've often wondered at the efficiency of BA's yield management team. On flights to Europe, BA seems to start pricing at full fare within several days of departure even though there may be quite a number of unfilled seats when the plane takes off.

It's a similar scenario at LH. Within three days of travel, flights from the UK all revert to full fare prices irrespective of load.

As I see it, the LCCs have more efficient systems and their prices more accurately reflect demand for a particular flight.

Filling every seat on the aircraft is not the object of the exercise. The object of the exercise is to maximise the revenue from the seats that you have.

Simplistic example: Suppose you have 10 seats left to sell. You could put them on at £100 each, or you could put them on at £680 each. At £100 each, you'll sell all of them. However, at £680 each there'll only be two desperate businessmen who need them and you'll take off with 8 empty seats.

Which is the better business decision?