Heathrow was pretty much shut after 8pm today but is now taking the odd arrival.

BA or bmi to Heathrow

Heathrow Express to Paddington

Hammersmith & City Line to Shepherd’s Bush Market

Unless you have a frequent flyer card on either BA or bmi there isn’t too much difference between the two of them. LCY is a long way from Shepherd’s Bush so isn’t really much of an option. STN, LTN and LGW would take a lot longer so there would have to be a considerably lower cost than the LHR flights to be worthwhile.

Are people missing the point?, nothing has changed, you can still check in on line up to 24 hours before hand and select your seat, the service hasn’t changed at all?, this is just an additional service that wasn’t there before, i.e. you can, for a cost, select your seat when you book the ticket that wasn’t there before?, it’s optional, and the usual service hasn’t diminished?????

Exactly, for the most part this doesn’t change anything, it just brings in the option to choose your seat if you wish to pay for it.

For now you have no option at all to choose your seat before 24 hours (unless, like me, you’re lucky enough to have a shiny card or fly on full fare tickets).

On the 30th October 2009 flight US728 from PHL to LHR still has plenty of seats available. It is not sold out at all. Go on usairways.com and try and buy a flight from LHR to MCO on the dates you want. Funnily enough they are prepared to sell you a new ticket.

I’d get back on the phone and ask them what they’re playing at.

Flights don’t ordinarily sell out this far in advance, October is still a long way away.

The point is that Barclays, as a part of its business, flies a large amount of people between London and New York every single day. They already have a strong corporate deal with BA which gives them an excellent price on the LHR-JFK service.

Given the massive advantages the LCY-JFK service will give to their employees (as anyone who has ever tried to get between an office in Canary Wharf and Heathrow will testify) and therefore their bottom line, it is in their best interests to ensure the service goes ahead.

By guaranteeing a certain number of seats per flight, Barclays will get a lower cost per seat than they were getting out of LHR, AND will be getting a service that saves them money and gives them productivity.

The real risk for this project is that it is danger of becoming TOO successful and removing too many high value customers from the LHR-JFK services. We are already seeing a big capacity reduction on the route. A year ago all 8 flights were run with 747s, this winter it becomes almost exclusively run with 777s.

The risk for Barclays on the other hand is that they block book the plane and then let the seats go empty.

Overall however I feel that this is probably the most positive, win-win scenario that the industry (if not just BA) has seen during the recession and I’m glad some visonary people have encouraged it along.

I don’t know anyone at BA except those directly involved with the launch that would agree.

Aimed primarily at the banking sector, this is the wrong market at the wrong time. It’s bad enough that they are pig-headedly carrying on with Openskies, without sending more empty aircraft across the pond.

1L.

I’m not sure if you are aware but there is a contract with Barclays that guarantees the purchase of a certain number of seats on every flight. The numbers I have heard have varied between 30-50% of all seats on every flight.

With that initial undertaking agreed, this is most definitly the right time to launch this service. Openskies on the other hand has no such corporate undertakings…

Well, MAN-LAS was an A330, this will be with an A321 via AMM.