On Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:06:00 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:

On Tue, 19 Jun 2012 21:35:35 +0100, Recliner
wrote:

On Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:59:45 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:

Given the huge play BA make about being the UK's favourite airline
they're not going to step out of line.

Actually, it's many years (even decades?) since BA claimed to be the
world's favourite airline. I can't remember what spurious statistic
they based it on, but they wouldn't be number one using it today. I
think Ryanair sometimes claims to be the UK's favourite airline these
days.

Well OK I've just got the old slogan lodged in my brain. However it's
clear that BA certainly see themselves as British. The livery is red,
white and blue, the flag is on the tail and the "to fly, to serve"
campaign is steeped in the history of UK aviation and that "stiff
upper lip" British approach to customer service.

Ryanair is Irish and is just a crap airline version of Megabus and I
apologise to Mr Souter for sullying his coach service!

Yes, BA seems to be more keen these days to emphasise its Britishness
-- it played it down during the brief world-tails era. That's when
Virgin added the union flag to its livery so it could claim to be the
British flag carrier. Both BA and the now-defunct bmi now use subtle,
stylised versions of the flag, whereas in some of Virgin's many livery
variants, it's less-than-subtle (eg,
http://www.airplane-pictures.net/pho...eing-747-400/).

Of course, since its merger with Iberia, BA probably has a lower
percentage of British ownership than ever before in its history.

As for Ryanair vs Megabus, at least Megabus doesn't load you up with
numerous extra near-impossible-to-avoid add-on costs.