News: BA direct versus connecting flights price comparison
Flights > News > # 2120 (25/03/2009)
British Airways operates a host of routes from the UK that no other airline offers.
We wanted to investigate whether BAs monopoly on these routes would give them effective licence to charge a hefty premium.
We looked at flight prices for ten BA-only routes and compared them with the cheapest one-stop flights option using price comparison website Kayak.co.uk. We searched for flights leaving London on July 18, returning to the UK on July 25.
London Gatwick to St Kitts
Direct with BA £810
From London Heathrow via New York with American Airlines £830
Difference -- British Airways cheaper by £20 -- a saving of 2%
Comment -- any flights to the Caribbean via the USA are always considerably more hassle than flying direct.
London Gatwick to Bermuda
£645 with BA
£758 with Continental from Heathrow via New York
Difference -- British Airways cheaper by £113 -- a saving of 18%.
Comment -- even more so than flights to the Caribbean, taking flights to Bermuda via the USA involves an unnecessary dog leg of a journey. This is because it costs rival airlines a lot more to provide such flights, so it isn't worth it for them to try and compete with British Airways on this route.
London Gatwick to Port of Spain, Trinidad
£855 (July 19 to 26)
£815 via Tobago with BA/Caribbean Airlines
Difference -- £40 -- a premium of 5% for direct flights.
Comment -- this is only a small premium to have the convenience of flying straight to Trinidad, rather than having to take flights there via nearby Tobago. Perhaps the difference between the two prices is not all that great, as British Airways are operating the long-haul sector in both cases.
London Heathrow to Buenos Aires
£1092 with BA direct
£752 with Iberia via Madrid
Difference -- £340 -- a premium of 31% for direct flights.
Comment -- this is the classic case of paying significantly more for the direct flight, but such a long trip might be more comfortable to break up in New York or Miami rather than Madrid. The Spanish capital has always had much better links with South America, so it is not surprising that Iberia can offer much cheaper flights than British Airways.
London Heathrow to Chennai (Madras)
£556 direct with BA
£386 with Air India via Mumbai
Difference -- £170 -- a premium of 31% for direct flights.
Comment -- another case of paying significantly more for the direct flight, although it does save you the hassle of changing planes in Mumbai.
London Heathrow to Grand Cayman
£831 direct with BA
£767 with Continental via New York
Difference -- £64 -- a premium of 8% for direct flights.
Comment -- Unlike Trinidad and Bermuda, flights to Grand Cayman are more expensive with British Airways than they are with rival airlines via the USA. Bearing in mind that the British Airways flights operate via the Bahamas anyway, the convenience advantage of flying with BA isn't as great as it is to other destinations in the region.
London Heathrow to Phoenix
£667 direct with BA
£522 with Northwest via Minneapolis St Paul
Difference -- £145 -- a premium of 22% for direct flights.
Comment -- Phoenix is one of the few US destinations that British Airways operate to exclusively, but there are numerous alternatives to get there by indirect flights. If there is such a thing as a 'typical' premium for a direct flight, this is it.
London Heathrow to Providenciales
July 19 to 26
£949 direct with BA
£1256 with American Airlines via Miami
Difference -- British Airways cheaper by £307 -- a saving of 32%.
Comment -- These flights to Providenciales had by far the greatest margin of savings for flying direct with British Airways, and considering the hassle of flying via the USA to get to the Caribbean, there really is no contest here.
London Heathrow to Baltimore
£543 direct with BA
£525 with US Airways via Philadelphia
Difference -- £18 -- a premium of 3% for direct flights.
Comment -- we wouldn't really expect passengers to pay that much of a premium to take direct flights to Baltimore Washington airport, as it is effectively an alternative airport to Washington Dulles, which is served by direct flights from Virgin Atlantic and United as well as British Airways. US Airways' major hub of Philadelphia is only just 'up the road' -- the fastest trains between Philadelphia and Baltimore take just one hour, so this effectively creates competition between different arrival airports as well as between airlines, something which isn't so evident on the other routes we looked at.
London Heathrow to Entebbe / Kampala
£970 direct with BA
£577 with KLM and Kenya Airways via Amsterdam (£534 with two stops)
Difference -- £393 -- a premium of 41% for direct flights.
Comment -- British Airways seem to be able to get away with a much larger premium here, we can guess that this is due to perceived differences in service standards between European airlines and their African counterparts.
Conclusion:
Our research on British Airways flight prices for the above ten routes shows that there is no set rule about whether you will pay a premium for direct flights -- in 7/10 cases British Airways were able to get away with a premium, but in three of these examples the difference was less than 10%. One notable point was that for the three destinations where British Airways are cheaper -- Providenciales, Bermuda and St Kitts -- an alternative flight would have meant travelling via the USA, which is a considerable extra distance and hassle. It is generally accepted that airlines will offer lower prices where flights involve the inconvenience of one extra change, but when competition involves so much extra mileage on the indirect route, there is much less point in rival airlines competing.
At the other end of the scale, the largest premiums charged for the direct flights were for destinations in developing countries, but even if customers might perceive a lower standard of service from Air India or Kenya Airways, are the differences in service standards between British Airways and Iberia really so great that BA can justify being nearly 1/3 more expensive on the Buenos Aires route?
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