British Airways claims online record
Carrier says it sold 34,500 seats in one day during recent promotion
British Airways is claiming that it has broken all its previous records for online bookings, following a four-day seat sale during which it sold a new seat every two seconds.
The sale was part of the carrier’s “Big Sorry Small Prices” campaign, clearly aimed at winning back customers who were left angry after the chaos caused by strikes at Heathrow last month.
Martin George, BA’s director of marketing, said: “We already carry more passengers across the UK and Europe to more destinations than any other British-based airline and now regularly sell more than 40 per cent of our shorthaul leisure fares online.
“Ba.com is increasingly popular with our customers and more than 11,500 online bookings in one day breaks all previous records. Given that each booking on average contains three seats we sold more than 34,500 seats via Ba.com during the busiest day of the sale.”
The carrier’s top five destinations during the sale were New York JFK, Kingston, Miami, New York EWR and Orlando.
By way of comparison, Ryanair carried 2.04 million passengers last month, with 94 per cent of them booking online. Using News From Abroad’s very basic mathematical skills, this equates to around 63,000 seats sold online every day. A spokesman for EasyJet confirmed that it also sells between 60,000 and 65,000 seats per day online.
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