Stretch 8 From United States, joined May 1999, 2540 posts, RR: 24 Posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 2815 times:
Okay, here's the issue: The new carrier Maxjet will soon be commencing 5x weekly service from IAD to London-Stansted. They are offering an "all-in" return fare of $999.
I am a loyal BA customer, and love the Club World product. Also, I like to connect at LHR on my way to Croatia (my usual destination in Europe). But I have to burn through 25k Executive Club miles to get the upgrade.
Pros for Maxjet: the price; a new experience
Cons for Maxjet: Tired old 767, Stansted (where the hell is that, anyway?)
Pros for BA: Great CW product, upstairs on the 744
Cons for BA: Burning up miles for the upgrade
What do you think?
Maggs swings, it's a drive deep to left! The Tigers are going to the World Series!!!
DavidT From United Kingdom, joined Oct 2005, 472 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 2798 times:
Club World definately - MaxJet is more comparable with the lower end of J cabins / premium economy whereas club world is really nipping at First class's heels.
Previous flights: BA LHR-YVR, MAN-JFK (Club); BA MAN-HEL; AY MAN-HEL,TLL; Next Flights: BA LGW-ANU, BA LHR-DXB
Keesje From Netherlands, joined Apr 2001, 9942 posts, RR: 52 Reply 4, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 2759 times:
IMO IAD - LHR is a too short to really benefit from the BA bed, certainly minus dinner/breakfast. On to Croatia.. you´ll be screwed
STN-LHR is 36 nm straight. Might be lot of public transport, a cab costs too.
I would prefer to spend my 25k miles for a trip with my partner & give Maxjet a try. I think their "business light" approach London/NY/IAD is worth consideration. 60 inch pitch is pretty good IMO
BCAL From United Kingdom, joined Jun 2004, 3384 posts, RR: 30 Reply 5, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 2744 times:
Well until you try something new, you will not know what it is like so perhaps give MAXjet a trial (and write a trip report to share your experience with us).
However, looking at the pros and cons, it is BA all the way for me for the following reasons:
Choice of three daily departures on BA, against MaxJet's 6 x weekly departures
MaxJet's start on IAD-STN has been delayed to 3 April - they were having problems fitting out the 767
If MaxJet's 767 goes tech, you can bet that there will be a delay as they have no spare aircraft to bring out in its place
BA's service is consistent, established and professional whereas MaxJet is a newbie
BA Club Miles
STN is on the opposite side of London for me. Whilst it might be more convenient for Canary Wharf, and you will avoid LHR's congestion, remember that most onward flights to Europe from STN are with the LCCs.
BTW there is an article about MaxJet in this month's issue of Airliner World, which has just hit the news stands in the UK.
MOL on SRB's latest attack at BA: "It's like a little Chihuahua barking at a dying Labrador. Nobody cares."
WJ From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2006, 305 posts, RR: 0 Reply 6, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 2712 times:
Being very familiar with both, IMO there is no comparison, BA club world is the best business class seat and business service across the Atlantic. Maxjet is at best a low end business type service. BA offers better seats, better food, mileage program, in-seat IFE (trust me, that's a big one) and a newer aircraft. Maxjet is nice and they do try, but between the two, it's not even close.
RoseFlyer From United States, joined Feb 2004, 5636 posts, RR: 27 Reply 7, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 19 hours ago) and read 2656 times:
Everyone of course agrees that BA has a better product. It is a premium business class whereas Maxjet is a discount business class. The only reason to fly Maxjet is the lower costs. If you want service and comfort comparable to BA then you can fly Eos, but they are more like $5,000 roundtrip.
I personally would save the money and likely fly Maxjet. It isn't bad, but is cheaper. Those BA miles might be more useful for a different flight. However if you don't mind using them up, then go BA.
This really isn't a decision that you can put up and expect someone to have a real answer to since one choice has a better product and the other costs less. If depends on what you prefer more.
My job is to make it so your flight is not delayed. Come fly the friendly skies!
Keesje From Netherlands, joined Apr 2001, 9942 posts, RR: 52 Reply 9, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 2544 times:
I think nobody is questioning the superior product of BA or VS, however we are talking value for money here. So better compare MAxjet to Traveler Plus. Might I place the following provocative hypothesis:
"Maxjet is for people that pay themselves for tickets"
Stretch 8 From United States, joined May 1999, 2540 posts, RR: 24 Reply 10, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 2497 times:
Thanks for these replies. Yes, I think the BA product is the best. I especially like the posh showers, food, and Molton Brown treatments at the arrivals lounge Now I just wish BA had its flights to SPU and DBV out of LHR, and not LGW . . .
Maggs swings, it's a drive deep to left! The Tigers are going to the World Series!!!
Wjcandee From United States, joined Jun 2000, 3770 posts, RR: 20 Reply 11, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 13 hours ago) and read 2345 times:
Okay, here's my rant.
I don't see how people can disparage the maxJet product without trying it, but, hey, everyone's entitled to have an uninformed opinion.
To compare a $10000 r/t Club World ticket bought less than two weeks in advance, or a $6000 r/t Club World ticket bought more than two weeks in advance to a $999 r/t maxJet ticket, and then say that well the ClubWorld seat is better just makes me laugh my ass off. And to say that maxJet is more like World Traveler Plus...Bwwwwwaaaaaahahahahahahah! Maxjet seat: 160 degree recline, SIXTY inches of pitch, legrest, lumbar, hydraulic headrest, 2x2x2. WT+: 2 inches extra recline over coach, 38 inches of pitch, 2x4x2.
I can think of a hell of a lot to do with the extra $9000 that you guys advocate indiscriminately blowing over the course of less than 12 hours. No matter how self-important one is, it's just inconceivable to me that one could really think that somehow this could be justified. By "loyalty" to an airline. By the availability of kickbacks (in the form of FF miles and upgrades). By, well, anything. I park my ass in a decent chair, and rotate in and out of it, for periods of a lot more than six hours at work on a regular basis. My assistant doesn't bring me lobster. And yet I can still somehow manage to get some pretty damn important work done. Why is it that people seem to need a little on-airline-refrigerator-carton-clubhouse/fort in order to get work done? And how can it be worth NINE GRAND?
I pay for a lot of my travel. My clients pay for a lot of my travel. I don't see any need to dramatically inconvenience myself just to save the client a little money, but I also think that it's downright immoral to just indiscriminately blow their money on stuff. And this is regardless of what the corporate culture is on this stuff. I guarantee you that in virtually any company, if one were to go and ask the CEO, "Should I spend the extra $9000 to travel on ClubWorld on a six-hour flight, rather than on MaxJet with its 19-inch-wide seat and its SIXTY-inch pitch that reclines to 160 degrees? Clubworld has a nicer seat than that," I can pretty much tell you what the response would be.
Back when Midway Metrolink was flying (a decent business-class service, much like Midwest is today), I sat next to the CFO of a major Chicago company while on the way back to MDW from LGA. It was his first time on the airline, and he had ended up on it sort of by accident; he had a Y-fare (paper) ticket on another carrier and the flight to ORD had been cancelled, and somebody had suggested that he walk over to Metrolink. He was marveling at the soothing, businesslike environment on the plane, and telling me how the whole experience so far had fit him like a glove. Midway had a procedure at the time (say 1984) where if you showed up at the last minute and didn't have a ticket, you could buy it on the plane. (All the f/as were trained how to use a ticket imprinter and knew all the relevant airport codes.) When the f/a came around during the flight to do his ticketing, he handed her his Y-fare ticket on whatever and she did the transaction, which included issuing a refund voucher for the fare difference, which was significant. "Wow," he noted, "and I get money back, too." "Riiiiight," she said, and winked. He looked at her quizzically, and she sort of apologized, explaining that any number of travelers had told her that when traveling on business, they often bought a Y-fare ticket on a major carrier, then used it on Midway and took the refund to their credit card while expensing the original ticket. Even where they had to provide boarding passes, Accounting usually didn't pick up that there was a price differential. Mind you she was talking to a company's CFO. He was pretty flummoxed, and vowed that there would be a travel policy preferring Midway in place within an hour after he returned to the office (as well as accounting controls to stop that practice). I think Midway must have picked a bunch of business that day.
As to time-savings being a justification, it's a straightfoward mathematical equation: if I'm billing my travel time at $X per hour, then the time savings either outweighs what the client pays me or it doesn't.
Because it's a free country, anyone can spend money on anything they want, but I have to say that for the extra $9000, one could: (a) buy a Rolex; (b) buy a diamond for the woman in one's life; or (c) go to Nevada and legally buy 48 hours of life-altering bliss with that pornstar that one has been drooling over since one was age 16. What's odd (at least to me) is that an extraordinary number of people seem to prefer that phat airline seat to 48 hours with Jenna Jamison or her ilk. While that may certainly be understandable to the folks on an airline forum, it's harder for me to see why that's the case for the public at large.
Maybe that could be a marketing campaign: "Place butt here for 12 hours (photo), or place butt here for 12 hours (photo) AND ALSO place body HERE for 24 hours (photo)." (or -- "and take home this diamond" or "and take home this watch"). Hey, some hotels I know have a room-and-diamond package, or a cocktail that comes with a diamond in it. Hmmmm....
Stretch8 -- you're a 40-ish-year-old lawyer. I think you should seriously consider flying Maxjet, then booking a ticket to Reno upon your return and heading for the hills. You can then give us a trip report on the WHOLE experience.
THANK YOU for knocking some sense into this discussion. BA Club World makes sense only if:
1. You upgrade with 25K miles
2. You work for an investment bank, sports/entertainment biz or where there's a deal involved.
3. If you make more than $50K/mo.
4. If you would rather sleep for 4 hours (JFK-LHR) than buy a fur coat or go on a cruise for 7 days...
It is absolutely dumb for anyone to pay full fare out of their own earnings. $5K is a lot of money!
I fly to India once a year on BA CW (JFK-MAA is cheaper than JFK-LHR) and get 400 tier points and about 70K miles in the process. I can then use these miles for 4 R/T upgrades from WT+ JFK-LHR, so it's worth it.
CW is the gold standard transatlantic, but it's getting rather tired (too much of a good thing?), and I'm tempted to try alternatives until BA rolls out something new.
At $999, the right comparison is with WT+ ($1,400) and not CW. Needless to say BCAL's point about the 6x weekly frequency and tech outages make Maxjet a difficult choice. I hope somebody tries it once and sends in a trip report...
A good test of value is if you are in a Business Cass seat paid for by your company, and I crawl up from Economy and ask you to switch with me for $1,000, would you do it? I bet 90% would jump at it.
Wjcandee From United States, joined Jun 2000, 3770 posts, RR: 20 Reply 13, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 2277 times:
Quoting Comorin (Reply 12): 6x weekly frequency and tech outages make Maxjet a difficult choice. I hope somebody tries it once and sends in a trip report...
But for $9,000? Or even $600 (the difference between them and short-advance-purchase coach on American). Nobody has mentioned MaxJet going tech anytime recently...and with just one round-trip per day, they have plenty of time every day to do some serious maint on the a/c. And for a transatlantic flight, does it really matter if its at 7pm or 6pm, provided it's in the right day part? Maybe...but you know what? I'd just stay in the office another hour and work there...
Aussieindc From United States, joined Jul 2005, 363 posts, RR: 0 Reply 14, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 2256 times:
While not knowing myself, how many points are required to upgrade from WT+ to Club on BA? If you get a 'T' class fare instead of 'W', it should be a little cheaper (dependant on the season).
Wjcandee From United States, joined Jun 2000, 3770 posts, RR: 20 Reply 16, posted (3 years 9 months 5 days 11 hours ago) and read 2225 times:
Quoting Comorin (Reply 15): Sorry, I was referring to the risk of a tech outage on flight schedules, as per :
Gotcha. Didn't mean to sound snippy. My own experience is that, unless you're at someone's hub or on a very-high-volume route, if an a/c has a maint problem, you're gonna be delayed regardless. If it goes completely down, you're still probably gonna be delayed for several hours until another a/c can come in and get you, if the airline bothers to do that. If I'm at Cancun having flown in on Continental, or Bermuda having flown in on USAir, I don't typically agonize about whether there is or is going to be a maint issue that destroys my schedule. It's so very, very rarely an issue. I'm much more likely to be delayed for 3 hours trying to get to ATL on DL during the summer when the whole thing shuts down d/t thunderstorms than I am to be delayed even an hour by a maintenance issue. With the kind of between-flight time that maxJet has to do preventative maint, they ought to be able to get well above 95% dispatch reliability.
Jetdeltamsy From United States, joined Nov 2000, 2965 posts, RR: 11 Reply 17, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 21 hours ago) and read 1982 times:
Quoting Wjcandee (Reply 11): I can think of a hell of a lot to do with the extra $9000 that you guys advocate indiscriminately blowing over the course of less than 12 hours. No matter how self-important one is, it's just inconceivable to me that one could really think that somehow this could be justified.
Then you clearly don't understand how the "entitlement" set thinks.
Very few individuals pay for business class themselves; it's almost all company money. To many, many people, $9,000 of your company's money is nothing to be concerned with, and they feel the company owes them a certain level of comfort for their personal inconvenience of having to travel.
I agree that it's huge waste of money to fork out that much money to get more food and a bigger seat.
Worked for too many airlines to list. Banktupcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy.
Jacobin777 From United States, joined Sep 2004, 13323 posts, RR: 69 Reply 18, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 21 hours ago) and read 1885 times:
Quoting Jetdeltamsy (Reply 17): Then you clearly don't understand how the "entitlement" set thinks.
Very few individuals pay for business class themselves; it's almost all company money. To many, many people, $9,000 of your company's money is nothing to be concerned with, and they feel the company owes them a certain level of comfort for their personal inconvenience of having to travel.
maybe thats why US companies are now outsourcing.....people think they "deserve this and deserve that".................history is showing otherwise....
Comorin From United States, joined May 2005, 2396 posts, RR: 7 Reply 19, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 19 hours ago) and read 1821 times:
I guess the other side of the coin is that if your CEO is making $50M a year, the very least your company can do is fly you in Business Class. Extending Jacobin777's point, we should outsource the CEOs first.
Both CEO salary and J class travel are the result of competing for employees. Let's say Morgan Stanley decides to fly its employees in J, then Merrill and others will have to do the same. $5K per employee per trip is peanuts for that kind of company.
Wjcandee From United States, joined Jun 2000, 3770 posts, RR: 20 Reply 20, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 18 hours ago) and read 1791 times:
Quoting Comorin (Reply 19): $5K per employee per trip is peanuts for that kind of company.
The one thing that I believe that the investment banks have missed is that going public opens them up to a lot more scrutiny and pressure than they probably think that it does. Where these companies don't actually produce anything tangible, spend upwards of 75% of their gross revenue on employee compensation, and compensate people that are no smarter than doctors, lawyers and college professors at a level that makes no sense whatsoever from a purely employee-retention standpoint, and charge fees that make no sense whatsoever when compared to the importance of things like legal advice and litigation defense (for which companies pay a hell of a lot less than they do to investment banks), this whole thing teeters substantially more precariously on the edge than most people today think. There was a time not twenty years ago where lawyers and doctors made more than investment bankers -- no more. And when you're a public company, and shareholders start to question...we'll see where they are ten years from now.
Comorin From United States, joined May 2005, 2396 posts, RR: 7 Reply 21, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 15 hours ago) and read 1728 times:
Thread hijack warning...
Quoting Wjcandee (Reply 20): The one thing that I believe that the investment banks have missed is that going public opens them up to a lot more scrutiny and pressure than they probably think that it does.
The investing public couldn't care less as long as their shares are doing well. Even Warren Buffett couldn't effect much change at Salomon. IBs are in the business of printing money, and only become Public companies to get even richer.
Quoting Wjcandee (Reply 20): and compensate people that are no smarter than doctors, lawyers and college professors at a level that makes no sense whatsoever from a purely employee-retention standpoint
I totally agree.
It's horrifying to think that all the smart minds (and they get 'em young) are going to work in IBs. I'm afraid the cure for cancer or colonization of the moon will just have to wait. You get your 1600 SAT score and go to Harvard to get into Morgan. Goodbye to future Einsteins and Darwins, they are all busy working as quants on the Street raking in big money.
The Invisible Hand has decided that providing Liquidity (the only real economic product of IB) will serve a greater good than any other activity, and so tells us we are wrong to think a doctor or engineer is more useful than a banker.
Businesses play by simple rules. If we have adopted free markets as our religion, and maximizing economic well being as our objective function, we can't have it both ways. We tried Socialism and Communism but they failed as economic practice, and until we find a better way, efficient allocation of capital will rule every human act.
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I totally agree.
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