[NTarrant]

Craig makes a good point, but empowering staff is not just for SME’s. Business Excellence whether EFQM or other is aimed at all business and that model gives empowering staff a high importance. It is at the end of the day down to training and how far empowering goes, there does have to be limits in some cases.

Part of the problem with airline pricing is that it is broken down to too many different scales in the same cabin under yeild management. I doubt many people buy a flexiable ticket just on a whim that they might get to the airport early.

I doubt that the issue is something that happens that often on a given route everyday, it would only be on those routes with a frequent service. Something for nothing, yes and no but both sides do gain

[craigwatson]

seasoned traveller-

I fail to see why your travel budget (or lack of) is the responsibility of BA? fine your travel budget would not spring for a flex ticket, ok then fine, fly on the flight your booked on.

[Cedric_Statherby]

Craig

The argument of flex against non-flex is an old one. I don’t mind paying a change fee if I have a non-flex ticket; that is both a reason to maintain the difference between flex and non-flex and also fair given that making the change is presumably not totally costless or effort-free, even if it is all done merely by tapping away at a computer terminal for 30 seconds. But I do challenge the assumption that 90 minutes before a flight leaves, an unsold seat is STILL worth the £268 extra they were trying to sell it for. Any ticket tout outside any sporting event knows that ain’t so – their price drops very sharply as the start time approaches!

The bigger question you raise is the 17 different fare types (only 17? Must be a 20-seater plane!). I have yet to see any serious industry study showing that this sort of byzantine complexity achieves anything positive at all. It is confusing, annoying, and restricting for staff and customers alike. In an industry I know rather better as a provider, the UK railways, the complex ticketing systems are of questionable value in raising revenue, are universally loathed by the booking clerks and are a major bone of contention. In at least one case I documented the management of one of the UK’s major railway companies argued so long about the exact tiering of prices and how many to release at each price (believe it or not they were arguing about whether to offer 10 or 15 seats per train at the low-low headline price – this on 500-seater trains!) that they were more than two weeks late releasing seats (in the UK, railway operators release seats on average 13 weeks in advance) and we found in our report that a significant number of passengers simply gave up on them and booked on a rival offering a similar but not quite as fast routing.

You can be too clever for your own good.

[MartynSinclair]

the two items that jump out from this disucssion are:

1. airport agents appear employed to process, not to serve, hence the lack of ability to provide undertake anything other than “a process”.

2. “empowered staff are happier staff” – means employees have to use intiative and have the ability to make decisions. Whilst not wishing to get into a debate about the quality of airport staff, a decision maker and customer service facing “empowered position” is not something you pick up off the dole q.

It needs training and a career, not a wage packet and a job!

[Cedric_Statherby]

Martyn

Your second point is a good one, and runs far beyond the airline industry. Somewhere the bargain between employers and employees which previous generations would have understood – viz employer trains staff and trusts them, and staff reward employer with loyalty and longevity and a willingness to work in the company’s best interests not merely for themselves – has gone. In its place staff want the flexibility to pursue their own interests ahead of their employer’s, and not surprisingly employers do not invest in assets which can walk out on them at any time.

So, no 40-year careers, no loyalty (from either staff or employers), no easy assumption that staff have the employer’s best interests at heart, or therefore that employers have any interest in their staff’s development or fulfilment. I pass no comment over whether this is an improvement on the near-servant status of employees 2 generations ago or not, I just observe that it has happened.

What is odd, and also sad, is that the army of management gurus and HR consultants who now abound have not found anything to match the ability of the past system (with all its faults) to deliver good customer service. It sometimes seems that the more companies these days claim to be customer-focused, the more they are driven by the bottom line and actually care very little about what their customers really think or want!

[MartynSinclair]

Typical, today my meetings in Europe finished sufficiently early to enable a mid afternoon return to London rather than a late evening.

I tried my “usual” of sweet talking the lounge staff (whom I will not identify on this occasion) but nothing was working. It looked as if I had a 5 hour stint in the lounge, which however wonderful, I would have prefered to have been travelling home on an earlier flight.

However, the lounge hostess, was really apologetic and felt embaressed that nobody was willing to make a decision. What I understood, was that it was not a case of the ticket cant be changed, but more about nobody knew “how” to change the flight.

She explained that all stations have discretion to overide ticket rules. Yes I could have spent 4 x the amount on a fully flex ticket, but I didnt and the choice was to sit in the Galleries lounge for 5 hours using the facilities, which I would quite happily done or trying to take a seat on an earlier flight all of which were flying at around 50% capacity.

I made my self comfortable and within 15 minutes she came through with a smile on her face (probably glad to get rid of me) and switched my boarding card to the earlier flight. I ended up speaking with her for a good 20 minutes and we even swopped email addresses (hmmmmmmm!!)

Bottom line here is that some will say I should have suffered the 5 hour wait, but, it served no purpose keeping me in “detention” and it didnt cost the airline by them showing me discretion.

A very pleasant day all round really. Thank you BA

[Bullfrog]

@Martyn .. that’s money ‘well spent’ by the airline in keeping customers happy & loyal, and it cost the airline nothing extra. Maybe your scheduled flight was over sold, so it actually saved the airline money.

@craig .. airlines may indeed to break their seats down into 17 fares. I appreciate the need for fare rules & revenue management. I won’t discuss the merit of this but coupled with selling the same 17 seats at different prices to those in other countries, (which I know is common practice with all legacy airlines) & basing those fares on what the ‘locals’ can afford is not transparent or professional. It is the ‘same product’.

I am still amazed that with ‘competition’ amongst UK scheduled long haul carriers, I am often offered the same fares .. ‘price fixing’ springs to mind.

Virgin always rant about the BA/AA tie up .. I would have thought it leaves them in an advantageous position. Yes BA/AA can pool costs but their fares only seem to go up.

One small point .. I often need an open jaw ticket where I can fly into USA from UK and back out from Canada, or vice versa. Why does Virgin not tie up with AC on ticketing and give BA competition.

‘Sorry for my morning rant”

[craigwatson]

Bullfrog – “I am still amazed that with ‘competition’ amongst UK scheduled long haul carriers, I am often offered the same fares .. ‘price fixing’ springs to mind”, this is the same as walking down the high street and 5 different stores all offering the same product for almost the exact same cost, it’s BECAUSE of competition that you are offered the same fares.

as to your point about selling the “same product” at differing prices, well again it happens everywhere, each of those different fares have different rules, so in fact it’s not the same product, it may be the same hard product, but not in the whole.

[craigwatson]

and why would AC want to tie up with VS? they already have a ticketing/fare agreement with CO/UA that have much more comprehensive routes than VS, so it wouldnt be in their favour

[Bullfrog]

@craigwatson

I am not familiar with the AC tie up with CO/UA, so thank you for pointing that out.

As regards ‘price fixing & competition’ … yes, I quote you, ‘shops have the same product for almost the exact same cost’. Yes that is right, the prices do tend to vary slightly for exactly the same identical product.

The airlines each offer a slightly different product, so it amazes me when I get a price for say J class (yes restrictions on the 17 + different fare basis applies) from identical airports to identical airports in the USA & the pricing in the price range of £2k to £3k is identical to the nearest £.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

@craigwatson

When easyJet offers a better service (in this context) than BA, then BA is very foolish to cling on to an outdated concept in the attempt to opportunistically harvest a profit.

In the longer term, it will lead to losing even greater market share.

BA should be leading the market, not being dragged by it.

Take a look around at Gatwick and compare the amount of orange to blue and go figure why.

LHR may seem like a fortress, but it isn’t.

[craigwatson]

ohters may disagree with me here, but i really dont think BA is trying to compete (ok they do half-heartedly) with easyjet for point to point traffic in europe, i feel BA only has a limited domestic market, and their european traffic to feed into the long haul from LHR/LGW.

In these days of LCC’s, full service carriers like BA, LH… would struggle to make money from short haul and just use them to feed their long haul operations where the money is.

Granted this is not an absolute. There will be some specific european routes that are very profitable, but for the majority I dont think so

[conair346]

For my dissertation I’ve been studying liberalisation and competition in the industry, mainly with regards to air rights etc and not fares, but I have touched on it.

I still find it amazing that airlines are so heavy fisted at times when passenger choice has never been greater. I understand what some of you say about just buy a flex ticket, but as also mentioned this isn’t always an option.

Allowing pax to turn up early and change could be open to abuse but for the majority who would use it, it would keep them happier and mean that the airline can sell the seat to someone who turns up late, or without reservation. There is a difference to being early and the airline trying to keep you happy and loyal; and being late from being at the mercy of meetings or other travel providers and you creating work for the airlines ground staff; a reservation that is not traveled on the exact flight is automatically canceled and stored on some airlines and hence the complexity of changing when late. Whereas early reservations are easily changeable as they are still ‘live’.

It would be great to allow ground staff to make judgement calls, if someones booked the last flight with 50 spare seats and they turn up for the breakfast flight and 4 spare seats its likely they’d be trying it on, but 4-5 hours before hand is plausible. The ground staff I work with are generally switched on and know what they’re doing and if they work with the real airlines like BA, SQ, QR, LX/LH etc then they’ll know how to change the reservations so nobody should have an experience like Martyn.

It come back to the fact the seat is there, and you have paid for a seat to travel from A to B with X airline so they’re still getting paid and have to convey you to B at some time, so why not get you out of the way, out of the lounge and possibly save money – I know when I’m early I get merry in the lounges which including the inflight service I generally end up with ‘free’ transport. My best challenge was flybe, I managed to get the cost of travel down to £1.75 a beer – half the airport retail price of a pint.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

@craigwatson

“In these days of LCC’s, full service carriers like BA, LH… would struggle to make money from short haul and just use them to feed their long haul operations where the money is.”

Do you have a reference to support this assertion?

[LuganoPirate]

Disgusted, I’ve had the same problem with multiple postings of the same message using my iPad. Syncing and upgrading the OS seemed to do the trick and fixed the problem 😉

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