BA to Amman – Club Europe seating

[0 post]

Did you hear about the Kiwi who took emirates to court recently and won on a similar issue?

Basically, the J seat on the website was not the J he had once on board.

[Richie]

Mid-haul flights operated by B767s are fantastic.

[Londonsteve]

JDB wrote:

@PeteM Qatar may own 25% of the company but that doesn’t help pay back the covid debt or pensions. It actually forces them to be more commercial because Qatar expects a return on its investment which is both strategic and commercial.

While BA of course has a rich market in London, US airlines have many equally rich markets but they received $billions of non repayable cash sums during covid and they were previously allowed to wipe out pension and healthcare liabilities [BA has to top up by c.£300m pa – not good to start your year minus that sum]. ME and Asian airlines are subsidised and bailed out. BA and Virgin, owing to long standing government policies by both parties, operate in a very different environment to their competitors.

This serves to explain the commercial rationale but as a paying customer why should I care about any unique pressures BA finds itself under? I’ll vote with my feet and fly with the best quality or best value offering on a given route; if BA isn’t receiving the government support they require or deserve, or don’t operate in the regulatory climate they need to be competitive, that’s their conversation to have with the relevant organisations. And even if BA was operating on an even footing with comparable carriers, they’d still seek to nickle and dime customers to keep costs as low as possible while retaining enough passengers to run flights profitably. The desire to offer a top notch product and generous on board service starts with a national culture that is thus attuned, continues with a society and government that wishes to show foreign guests their best side and a corporate culture that is about long term planning rather than about massaging the figures to please the stock market in the short term. There’s zero chance I’ll fly with BA on a route of 4 hours or more that offers the short haul product, particularly not when there are so many high quality offerings on many of these routes, all of which are better than BA. Heck, even a Turkish low cost airline like Anadolujet offers a better all round experience, let alone plain Economy on Turkish.