British Airways sees its “Word Traveller Plus” premium economy product as key to its recovery, as the United Kingdom surges past its neighbors in coronavirus vaccinations.
British Airways Sees Premium Economy Recovery
First, the bad news. British Airways does not see business travel recovery in the near future. While hardly breaking news, it marks another piece of evidence that even with wide-scale vaccination programs, business travel will be slow to return. Consequently, British Airways anticipates that demand for business and first class will remain low.
But British Airways CEO Sean Doyle noted on Friday that the short-term premium market will concentrate on premium economy:
”We are increasing the number of seats that are available for sale in World Traveller Plus materially and I think that plays well for the development of the market over the next couple of years.
”We do anticipate corporate travel will lag other segments like [family visits] and leisure, and World Traveller Plus is a very strong leisure product. So I think things like the retirement of the 747 has actually accelerated the development of that product mix and I think it works very well with the trajectory of recovery we anticipate.”
British Airways also announced:
- 28% of its fleet now features the new Club World suite
- Live and Let’s Fly reviewed the new Club World suite aboard the A350-1000
- BA lost €3.88 billion in 2020
- Revenue was down 70%
- No further job cuts are anticipated
- 9,500 positions have already been cut
- A final decision has not been made on London Gatwick service this summer
CONCLUSION
British Airways is hardly alone in its struggles to entice customers to fly again and find the right balance of product and destinations to appeal to a cautious public not eager to rush back to flying. For now, it is focusing on premium economy, hoping to command a premium from leisure travelers unwilling to splurge for business class but wanting an upgrade from economy class.
“We are increasing the number of seats that are available for sale in World Traveller Plus”
What does that mean exactly? They will be putting more of these seats on their planes, and if so, will they be removing seats in Business Class and/or Economy to accommodate them? Or will they just be marketing these seats better and/or offering better prices?
But for this to work they would have to offer a good Premium Economy product to start with.
Premium economy is now called a suite? How long until the lav is marketed as a spa?
Nevermind. Mis-read it.
The new A350s have a big PE section and they’re utilising the 32J LGW config birds on LHR routes which also have a big PE cabin.
Could also mean overselling and then upgrading to CW perhaps. Always been a strategy when required – I was on a summer LHR-JFK where the entire PE cabin was upgraded to CW to handle economy oversale
As Phil remarks, it needs to improve somewhat. The food is OK but it needs another inch or two in legroom and the same for recline to attract decent money for it.
My assumption is that given the options of planes, they’ll likely fly the Gatwick configured ones which have a larger World Traveler Plus and smaller Club World cabin.
I could also see more business travel in PE in the future. Given the economic outlook, more businesses may not permit employees to travel in business class, but may allow for PE.
Just increase the pitch to 40-42 inches to be competitive with Air New Zealand and Emirates and offer the meals from the business class menu and you have a very solid product
Agreed, though I think the catering was already decent.
Added dedicated lavs instead of having PE hare with economy or at times business. You’d have a product that would be good enough for the business travelers. It would basically be business class from the late 1980s.
Let J mainly be populated by the high end leisure market, like F used to be