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What a switch for British Airways. In news that will astonish the many people I know who still insist on flying Abba, or Anyone But BA, one of the airline’s most high-end offerings is on a roll.
Its sales of the short-haul business class seats that everyone said would be throttled by Europe’s budget airlines have instead exploded. They’ve “defied our best expectations”, Sean Doyle, BA’s chief executive, said this week.
The premium cabins built for the sort of person who can pay up to £628 for an 85-minute one-way flight from Heathrow to Paris are, said Doyle, “more popular than ever, especially for leisure passengers”.
The first thought I had when I read his comments in The Times was that the £7bn “transformation investment programme” BA announced last year really might be starting to work. Perhaps the airline’s dismal days of IT fiascos, delays, cost-cuts and strikes were finally receding.
My second thought was, who are these people in short-haul business class? Who pays as much as three times the economy price to briefly enjoy more elbow room, better food and faster boarding, but pretty much the same legroom as the seats down the back?
As a regular traveller from London to Australia, I well understand the appeal of business class on long flights.
This understanding deepened last month in Melbourne as I stood in the economy check-in line for a good hour watching fellow London-bound travellers in business strolling off to the lounge after their bags had been whisked away in minutes.
I finally staggered on to a seat in economy that cost more than my first car, only to make a disturbing discovery. I was sitting next to a man with no shoes. And he was not alone.
Another passenger was not merely shoeless but largely naked, from her hips to her chest line, on account of being clad in a tracksuit and bra top more commonly worn to the gym. Also the beach, I suppose. But on a 23-hour flight to London?
A friend who took the same flight a week later returned bearing the same news. He too witnessed an unexpected surfeit of shoeless, sock-less feet, wandering into all the places on a long-haul flight that no bare skin should ever go, starting with the lavatory floor five hours in.
I relate all this for two reasons. First, I am happy for shareholders in BA’s parent company, IAG, that things may be finally going right for a carrier that, as recently as December, Which? magazine called “a thoroughly mediocre airline”.
But I am exceedingly unhappy that so many airlines keep racing to ramp up their premium class services while leaving those of us down the back to stew in ever more unpleasant juices.
BA plans to increase its premium economy seating by as much as 20 per cent from 2024 to 2027. Let’s hope the service is good. Qatar Airways, which has had double beds in business for years, recently announced it was extending servings of caviar from its first to business class cabins.
I understand why. The seats up front are vastly more profitable per square metre than all those rows in economy. Even premium economy seats can generate a third as much as those down the back. But Emirates boss Sir Tim Clark was surely right to say this week that the industry has been too slow to improve economy seating as it focused on premium customers.
If one did not know better, it would be tempting to think this is deliberate. The more gruesome economy becomes, the more desirable those lie-flat business seats, with or without the caviar.
Industry experts assure me I am wrong and there will always be enough demand for premium flying, no matter how good economy gets. If so, excellent. The first airline to make economy great, or even moderately more bearable, will be getting my cash pronto.
pilita.clark@ft.com
