So effectively, one advantage of the Business is extra flexibility. Do the full-fare Economy tickets also have additional flexibility?

I think so. They should do at that price but if you are paying full fare Economy then you could pay extra and go business class. But not that many people pay full economy rates anyway (as a daytime job amongst other things I used to calculate airline yields by class of service) preferring to pay cheap rates on APEX type tickets with a whole raft of restrictions eg can’t make any changes once booked, non refundable etc.

Very well. If you think Economy is good, why would you ever pay the Business or, worse, First Class fares??

Because my company may have a particular travel policy that said for particular types of journey I was allowed to travel business class, even on relatively short intra European journeys.

Or else they are prepared to pay the extra to have the flexibility in changing flights and don’t want to have the fare restrictions inherent in APEX tickets.

Remember that the full Economy fare is often not that far below the business fare (try turning up an hour before a flight and buying a long haul ticket – it’s EXPENSIVE).

Let’s face it the majority of people in business/first are travelling on business travel and being paid for by their employer and the number of people who actually pay full business class fares for themselves must be relatively small. You can get heavily discounted business/first fares and the rest of the people in business class are airline staff travelling on staff travel priviliges (been there – done it).

Ah. So low-cost carriers cannot operate if there is a legacy carrier serving the same route and airport – and are unprofitable if there is more than one low-cost carrier on the same route and airport?

Of course they can operate if there is a legacy carrier and probably the LCC will do better. My reference to two leagcy carriers on a route refers to the pre-liberalisation days when everything was done on a bilateral basis. These days the EU allows anybody to fly anywhere (airport slots allowing).

I presume that LCC’s do compete with each other on particular airport pairs but it would be really cut throat competition.

I bet there are bunch of websites you regularly visit, that I have never heard of.

My point being, just because you never heard of a site, doesn’t mean others don’t or are less likely to find it. That survey site does a lot of surveys and its most likely that the passenger used the website before for another review. Or perhaps he did what I do before booking with an airline, I check out reviews.
Or perhaps after his flight he was chatting to some friends, commenting on his experience and one of them told him about the site.
Or perhaps he even just searched for airline surveys in google.

You see how pointless this second guessing is?

For a good number of years I did work in a section carrying out passenger perception type market research for major airlines, and I also did some work on passenger standards for the EC part of which was ultimately put into operation, so at that time it was part of my daytime job to know about these sorts of sites. I know how difficult it is to get people to respond to any sort of questionnaire about their trip. Return response rates of 15% were good going.

As I have said before (virtually every time I have posted in this thread) I have no particular axe to grind one way or the other on this matter, however, I just find this particular event extremely curious.

The “council estate” thing was just a joke based on the oft-used and well known Southwest version I also included later on – sorry if anyone was offended.

Absolutely! Although I still contend that low-fare carriers have made the flying experience less pleasant overall.

Having said that, I stick by my comments about low-fare carriers. Whilst they may be good for most of the travelling public, the drive for lower and lower fares has been at the expense of the staff who work in the industry. Erosion in terms and conditions that low-fare carriers have applied to their own staff (and by consequence of needing to compete, the staff of other airlines), has turned the airline industry overall into a far less pleasant place to work.

Think of all the complaints from farmers over the price reduction demands made by companies like Tesco – Tesco want to give customers low prices for items like meat and milk, so they make demands on farmers that result in it being difficult for them to make money. Same principal applies with low fare-carriers. Next time you buy a flight for next to nothing, remember its the staff who “handle” you through your journey who have a less pleasant working life than was the case before the low-fare sector caught on.

This latest innovation by FlyBe will be another change than impinges on staff for the worse – there will be far more arguments at checkin over paying for baggage, and far more problems for cabin crew who will inevitably be forced to work out how to stow all the extra carry-ons in the limited cabin storage space on a packed DHC-8. Remember its not the poor sods who have to deal with irate customers who have brought in these innovations. Nothing, repeat NOTHING, like this would be introduced unless those at the top of the tree believe that they can either (a) save money/decrease costs or (b) make more money, as a result of the change. It is they who make the decisions, but it is the staff at the sharp end who have to deal with the fall out and the crap.

Andy

It’s called the cold winds of market forces and was bound to happen once deregulation had started with the dissolution of the CAB, and the lifting of the IATA fare coordination cartel, and the introduction of the EC third liberalisation package.

Competition driving down of unit cost has happened in other industries and the airline industry is not a protected species. It may be sad (and I speak as one of the many who were made redundant from IATA a few years ago) but it is a fact of life given that so many airlines have been privatised – there’s no feather beds anymore.

Regular travellers,regular *******ing traveller what are they. Do you meen the stuck up snobs who were the only ones who could afford to fly beofre LCCs came about. What an idiotic comment to make. I work in the airline business and havnt meat anyone who says LCCS have ruined the airline industry.

Exactly! Which of the US majors has been the only carrier to consistently show a profit over the past few years? Southwest.

Which sector of the air passenger market is growing fastest? The LCC sector.

If you ask me it’s the LCCs that are driving the industry forward.

without bothering to type in the coordinates, are these the North Korean An-2s mentioned over on the modern military forum?

Yes, it was an ex-RAF c-1 which was used by RR as a flying test bed for the RB211

09:00 K9101 ISLE OF MAN

From EDI arrivals.

IATA Code: K9*
ICAO Code: KRI
Known As: Krylo Airlines
Full Name: Krylo Airlines
Country: Russian Federation
Callsign: Krilo
Web Site:

IATA Code: K9
ICAO Code: SGK
Known As: Skyward Aviation
Full Name: Skyward Aviation Ltd.
Country: Canada
Callsign: Skyward
Web Site: http://www.skyward.mb.ca

From airline codes. :confused:

Due to the restricted number of two character codes available in the IATA portfolio there is the opportunity for controlled duplicates where the two airlines area or type of operations are not likely to clash. Eg a domestic pure cargo carrier in the US and a regional airline in SE Asia. I don’t remember a case where there were three codes in use but it is some time since I worked for them. K9 maybe in the process of being approved by the Codes Manager there.