In our news section, we’ve just looked at long haul routes where British Airways is the only airline offering non-stop point-to-point service.

The expectation might be that they would be able to get away with charging a premium for providing such a service – this has always been the way with the traditional airlines. However farcical it might sound, the logic has always been that the punter should be charged more for the direct routing, even though it costs the airlines much less to service such a route.

The article looked at flights to 10 different destinations across Africa, the Americas and Asia. Generally, the rule does still apply – regardless of the cost to the airline, consumers are prepared to pay more for the convenience of a direct routing, and the market is still driven by what the consumer is prepared to pay, rather than what it costs the airline to provide the service.

Infact, the main exceptions to the rule were where you might expect them – on flights to Bermuda, where British Airways were 18% cheaper than the nearest alternative, the non-direct routing would mean taking flights to New York, and then doubling back again to Bermuda – a route which hardly makes any sense at all, considering that Zoom Airlines used to offer flights from Gatwick to New York via Bermuda.

BA were also cheaper on flights to St Kitts and flights to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands – again, these were niche destinations where the alternative option would have been an unwieldy flight via the USA. However, BA weren’t always cheaper when it came to Caribbean flights where they were the sole direct provider – on flights to the Cayman Islands, it was cheaper to slug it via New York with Continental. Meanwhile, for flights to Trinidad (Port of Spain), BA were effectively competing against themselves, as the cheaper option was to fly with BA to neighbouring Tobago, and then take a short hop from there with Caribbean Airlines. However, the competition here is simply down to the fact that flights to Tobago are also available from airlines like Virgin and Monarch – therefore BA have to be competitive on that sector, making them competitive on the whole route through to Trinidad, providing you take the hop via Tobago.

On all the other routes we looked at, BA were still able to charge a premium for providing the non-stop service. In many cases, the difference was only a few percent, but when it came to flights to Entebbe / Kampala, the difference rose to 41% over the alternative of flying with KLM and Kenya Airways via Amsterdam. We can only assume that this is down as much to the perceived differences in service between British Aiways and their African rivals as much as it is down to the fact that BA serve the route non-stop.