CAI price increase
 

i just picked up our AONE4 this morning from CAI- and the man at the airport counter said this monday - the price will increase by 50%
not sure if this is 100% - be too late to do anything if it is.. but he said his manager has had 2 requests per day !! i wonder why..
so maybe get prices before you plan

Has anyone else also heard about this price increase?

Just spoke to my contact at BA. The manager at CAI has put in a request that fares should increase by approx. 40%. No decision has come back yet, but it looks likely that fares ex CAI will rise by circa this amount from Jan 1 2004 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

Why would the BA manager in CAI put in a request for a fare increase -- is it to take advantage of the higher volume of tickets that is currently being sold? An increase will most probably decrease the number of tickets sold ex-CAI.

"Decrease" in sales seems an understatement! I'm sure the Egyptian Tourism people would not look at favourably at killing a sector of the market.

How short sighted. I bet the manager who made the request thinks the demand is driven by a need or desire to start a RTW trip in Egypt.

As soon as the price is raised Cairo will hardly sell any RTW tickets!

looks like we may have to find a new friend in CMB.

I think it's down to logistics. BA's operation in Egypt is small and with current staffing levels it must be difficult dealing with all the demand they're getting for RTW tickets.

I also questioned the logic of it [apropos other posts on here]...

Business is so good that we need to raise prices to stop people from buying our product. That's just silly.

Would this just be for BA issued tickets?

It seems to me that BA cannot do this alone for all the Oneworld carriers. The decision has to be made by all of them, through whatever apparatus exists for making such decisions.

While I do not know how the revenue on a OWE is split up, it seems logical that all of the carriers would subscribe to a price increase ex-CAI. The Egyptian Pound continues to deteriorate against most world currencies. This means substantially less home currency revenue for each OW airline carrying OWE pax who ticket in CAI.

A BA CTO manager in CAI told me earlier this year that they recognized the surge in RTW demand ex-CAI was due to the very weak EGP and that something would be done about it if the weakness continued. It has so their rumored action is not unexpected. After all, we have seen it happen in other places with currency issues, most notably South Africa.

With the drop in the Dollar we might get lucky and have AA delay the increases. The other issue is how *A will price the ticket. The last thing ow needs is to be 40% higher than their competition.

The sad thing is that the CAI pricing has had to have an impact on travel - just as cheap domestic tickets has increased air travel in general. It would be rather sad to see this travel motivator killed off.

At the beginning of this year, EGP 1 = US$0.22 and €0.21. Today EGP 1 = $US0.16 and €0.13. That's almost a 30% decline against the US$ and a 40% decline against the €. A 40% increase would bring the pricing back to near the January 1, 2003 levels for the US$ but still 15% under the level for the € at that time.

QUOTE]Originally posted by kenm:
The other issue is how *A will price the ticket. The last thing ow needs is to be 40% higher than their competition.
[/QUOTE]

Not that that stopped them in the case of South Africa originating tickets.

Mrs Sobhi needs a well-earned rest. Why should she issue half the world's tickets single-handed? Give her a break.