Are airplanes in it for the profit?
Discussion
Hard-Drive said:
OK, I had about 15 mins before the check in closed for the earlier flight. So they were pretty blooming unlikely to be able to sell the seats. If it was the last one on the aircraft, then fair dinkum. If I were making the business decisions, I would have said I had more chance of selling "my" now empty seat on the later flight, at 1730, that was one of the last flights to get you into LHR at a sensible time. The flight was business, booked via a travel portal. I have a choice of flight options when I book, and provided I don't take the piss with first class or similar, I can make my own choices.
However I have just bought tickets for a holiday flight to Barbados in the summer, paid for by me, and I actually chose to fly BA rather than Virgin on account of some great service I have had from BA in the past. Both flying from LGW within about an hour of one another, and yes, the BA was actually a bit more expensive. So yes, I am loyal and won't base every decision on bottom line price.
It is not down to the check-in staff what price you pay. That is down to our revenue management team in Donington. They decide when the flight is closed and whether tickets can no longer be sold or if the flight is open for STBY passengers.However I have just bought tickets for a holiday flight to Barbados in the summer, paid for by me, and I actually chose to fly BA rather than Virgin on account of some great service I have had from BA in the past. Both flying from LGW within about an hour of one another, and yes, the BA was actually a bit more expensive. So yes, I am loyal and won't base every decision on bottom line price.
It might have annoyed you, but you really don't have anything to get annoyed about. You bought a ticket for a specific flight and you got on it. You didn't buy a ticket for any flight between LHR and EDI. I'd say we fulfilled our side of the bargain.
In the olden days, then yes, we would have sorted you out if seats were available at no cost, but the decision was made to change our ticketing to reflect the cost of these changes. You might think that it costs nothing, but it doesn't, everything has a cost and there is buggeration in moving you about.
Everyone does this now. BA are no different from bmi, RYR and EZY in this. Buy a non-flexible ticket and oddly enough, you have to pay extra to make it flexible. We'll be part of BA shortly so that policy won't change then.
We don't like annoying anyone, but equally we can't treat you any different from other passengers. If we allowed your non-flexible ticket to become flexible, then we'd have to do it for everyone who whinges and that would mean our ticketing strategy was completely pointless.
It didn't "annoy" me as such. I didn't even say anything to the ticket desk apart from "that's too much, I don't think I'll get that through on expenses". It was just a "WTF?" moment...I was trying to go earlier, not later, I hadn't missed my flight and I wasn't in an "over a barrell" situation.
As has been pointed out before, if it was a realistic, justifiable charge, then I gladly would have paid it. I was never expecting it for free. It's about value, not cost, and the perceived value of paying more than I'd paid for the entire trip, just to change a 55 minute economy class flight to one an hour and a half earlier was not worth £130 to me.
Whilst I appreciate ticketing strategy is important, you've just changed a win/win (additional revenue and a very happy customer) to a lose/lose (no additional revenue/a customer who will probably go with another carrier next time/negativity on a public forum). Interestingly I did manage to change a flight at no charge, exactly the same flight as it happens, a while ago when that Icelandic volcano had a second burp and things were looking a bit dicey. In fact, you guys offered it to me without me even asking, no charge either, just in case things were going to get worse and later flights were grounded. And this was a bags on belt, rush me to the gate job. But I suppose you were worried about having to fork out for a hotel in case I got stuck which is a very different thing to great customer service...
As has been pointed out before, if it was a realistic, justifiable charge, then I gladly would have paid it. I was never expecting it for free. It's about value, not cost, and the perceived value of paying more than I'd paid for the entire trip, just to change a 55 minute economy class flight to one an hour and a half earlier was not worth £130 to me.
Whilst I appreciate ticketing strategy is important, you've just changed a win/win (additional revenue and a very happy customer) to a lose/lose (no additional revenue/a customer who will probably go with another carrier next time/negativity on a public forum). Interestingly I did manage to change a flight at no charge, exactly the same flight as it happens, a while ago when that Icelandic volcano had a second burp and things were looking a bit dicey. In fact, you guys offered it to me without me even asking, no charge either, just in case things were going to get worse and later flights were grounded. And this was a bags on belt, rush me to the gate job. But I suppose you were worried about having to fork out for a hotel in case I got stuck which is a very different thing to great customer service...
Aeroplane and airplane have been equally valid expressions for the device dating right back to the 19th century- even before the Wright brothers flew their first aircraft.
"Airplane" has become the common American term and, up to recently, "aeroplane" was the British English version.
As with a lot of words, with the advent of Internet English and American spell checkers everywhere, "airplane" is gradually supplanting "aeroplane" in many British publications and in common usage. I even read an article a week or so ago in the Oxford Times (the home of "Oxford Rnglish) and they kept referring to "airplane".
"Airplane" has become the common American term and, up to recently, "aeroplane" was the British English version.
As with a lot of words, with the advent of Internet English and American spell checkers everywhere, "airplane" is gradually supplanting "aeroplane" in many British publications and in common usage. I even read an article a week or so ago in the Oxford Times (the home of "Oxford Rnglish) and they kept referring to "airplane".
I'm sure part of the pricing reason for charging you £130 to change your flight is to make you think about buying a flexible ticket next time. If they had only charged you £40, or did it for free, then next time you were buying a ticket and knew you might need to change your plans you would have gone for the cheaper non-flexible ticket as you had experience of how cheap it can be to change, so why pay the extra....
Regular passengers are very savy to tricks like this, and the airlines know it. A good few years back BA used to pretty much give a free upgrade to Club for any 'gold' frequent flyers travelling on a full fare economy ticket. Guess what, the passengers figured this out, so just stopped buying Club tickets and plan on getting the free upgrade. So the practise was stopped, and just done occasionally to give them a taste of what they were missing so they would go back to work and lobby for travel policy to be changed....
Regular passengers are very savy to tricks like this, and the airlines know it. A good few years back BA used to pretty much give a free upgrade to Club for any 'gold' frequent flyers travelling on a full fare economy ticket. Guess what, the passengers figured this out, so just stopped buying Club tickets and plan on getting the free upgrade. So the practise was stopped, and just done occasionally to give them a taste of what they were missing so they would go back to work and lobby for travel policy to be changed....
c7xlg said:
I'm sure part of the pricing reason for charging you £130 to change your flight is to make you think about buying a flexible ticket next time. If they had only charged you £40, or did it for free, then next time you were buying a ticket and knew you might need to change your plans you would have gone for the cheaper non-flexible ticket as you had experience of how cheap it can be to change, so why pay the extra....
Regular passengers are very savy to tricks like this, and the airlines know it. A good few years back BA used to pretty much give a free upgrade to Club for any 'gold' frequent flyers travelling on a full fare economy ticket. Guess what, the passengers figured this out, so just stopped buying Club tickets and plan on getting the free upgrade. So the practise was stopped, and just done occasionally to give them a taste of what they were missing so they would go back to work and lobby for travel policy to be changed....
That's certainly a factor, but the main thing is that when a passenger looks for an upgrade, then the system looks for the price of the ticket at that moment, compares the amount the customer originally paid and then the difference is what's asked for.Regular passengers are very savy to tricks like this, and the airlines know it. A good few years back BA used to pretty much give a free upgrade to Club for any 'gold' frequent flyers travelling on a full fare economy ticket. Guess what, the passengers figured this out, so just stopped buying Club tickets and plan on getting the free upgrade. So the practise was stopped, and just done occasionally to give them a taste of what they were missing so they would go back to work and lobby for travel policy to be changed....
I have to ask the question, if Hard-Drive had been flying with RYR or EZY, then would you have even asked about changing your flight? Would you have got annoyed and slagged them off on a web forum becuse they charged you what would have amounted to far more than £130 to change your ticket?
£130 wasn't worth it to you and you did not have to pay it, so why slag the company off? You might think it a lot, but the mysteries of revenue management dictate the price, not what you or I consider to be value for money.
We deal on a daily basis with passengers who kick off over nothing and demand all sorts of free things "or they'll never fly with us again" and oddly enough, every week, those same passengers are back on the aircraft. Our ground staff do a fantastic job of trying to keep passengers happy, but sometimes it's just not possible.
Next time, buy a fully flexible ticket, it not only allows you to change your flights, but gives access to the lounge and free drinks and food on the flight.
Between EDI and LHR, we often have the 2 class configured A320's on that route, which means you would have been likely to have found yourself sitting in one of the business class seats as well. So that £130 could have got you drunk in the lounge, fed on the flight and sat in a more comfortable chair. Alright for a 55 minute flight, it's fairly irrelevant, but you get a bit more for your money than simply the ability to change the flight times to suit.
Edited by IforB on Thursday 15th March 10:35
walm said:
Prawo Jazdy said:
This is very generalised, but the figures i've seen are that on a typical 150 seat aircraft (A319 for example), assuming the flight is full and taking an average ticket price across the aircraft, about three seats represents the profit from that flight. A huge amount of it was fuel, then there is the cost of the aircraft lease, overheads from the airline, route charges, airport charges, maintenance... It really does seem a slim margin if the example I saw was in any way representative.
For an average airline that may be true.You can take a real example, in this case the world's "favourite" airline Ryanair.
Using the figures from the March 2011 year end annual report:
Number of flights: 463,460
Adjusted net profit: EUR400.7m
So about EUR865 net profit per flight.
PAX: 72.1m
Total revenues: EUR3,630m
So average passenger pays c.EUR50 per flight (includes all "ancillary" charges).
So EUR865/EUR50 implied that it is the last 17 passengers who make up the entire profit for the flight.
However, none of this escapes the fact that airlines now privatised are run for profit rather than subsidised by the state (e.g. NHS) or non-profit making (e.g. Oxfam).
Indeed fuel costs are the largest line item, at 33.8% of sales and vary wildly having been 42.7% back in 2009.
IforB said:
Everyone does this now. BA are no different from bmi, RYR and EZY in this. Buy a non-flexible ticket and oddly enough, you have to pay extra to make it flexible. We'll be part of BA shortly so that policy won't change then.
We don't like annoying anyone, but equally we can't treat you any different from other passengers. If we allowed your non-flexible ticket to become flexible, then we'd have to do it for everyone who whinges and that would mean our ticketing strategy was completely pointless.
Not always.We don't like annoying anyone, but equally we can't treat you any different from other passengers. If we allowed your non-flexible ticket to become flexible, then we'd have to do it for everyone who whinges and that would mean our ticketing strategy was completely pointless.
I was flying back from Geneva 10 days ago, with BA, was meant to be on the 20:55 flight.. Got to the airport very early (as I didn't trust the roads from the mountains to not be crowded).
I saw my scheduled flight had a 15min delay at that point, so I rang BA, explained I was concerned by the fact it was already slightly delayed 5 hrs prior to take off, as I had another flight out to the US (also with BA), the next day.
They put me on the 18:40 flight, without quibble or charge.
It might have helped I have some frequent flyer status with them, that I've done 14 flights with either BA, or AA so far this year, but from a customer service point of view, I was very happy
That's so true from a business perspective... I've worked in companies where the sales force is measures on units/ revenue alone and goes for the 'golden eggs' without understanding or caring about the costs incurred, margins being eroded and precedent being set for future 'low value' custom!
I thought maybe I was being blinkered (being a manufacturing sort) until a girlfriend got a sales job in a company where they understood selling inside and out (it was all they did)... She had a range of different targets to meet that were built around dangling the sales carrot whilst protecting current and future margins!
I thought maybe I was being blinkered (being a manufacturing sort) until a girlfriend got a sales job in a company where they understood selling inside and out (it was all they did)... She had a range of different targets to meet that were built around dangling the sales carrot whilst protecting current and future margins!
jamie128 said:
stuttgartmetal said:
No.
They do it for the s
ts and giggles.
Dont be so sarcastic, i dont think buses/trains make much money its just a serviceThey do it for the s
ts and giggles.Gassing Station | Boats, Planes & Trains | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff