BA top-fare deserters 'gone for good'

A CITY clampdown on senior employees flying business class around Europe has cost British Airways 2.5m premium rate passengers a year.

Worse, says BA chief executive Rod Eddington, these highly profitable customers are unlikely to come back.

Eddington has admitted the collapse in short-haul premium paying passengers has cut the number of business class passengers in the UK and Europe over the past three years from nearly half a million a month to only 200,000.

'The half that we have lost is gone for good and numbers there will continue to erode,' said Eddington during an investors' day briefing for City analysts and commentators.

'My instincts tell me, my gut feeling - and it is what we are seeing as well - is that the purchasing policies of the big corporates is much changed. If they are sending people over to New York, they will will still fly premium. If they are sending people over to Frankfurt for a couple of nights, they are saying go economy.'

Eddington also admitted that BA is losing the fight with the rejuvenated Eurostar rail service for business passengers to Paris and Brussels.

'My rule of thumb is that one hour in the air is the equivalent of three hours on the train, city centre to city centre,'he said. 'If, with the high-speed link now up and running, that journey is less than three hours that will push business on to the train.'