Yesterday, British Airways confirmed that its business class sales slumped last month.  Their numbers feel 0.9% in May and business class flights were not the only ones affected.  Economy class bookings also fell by 0.6%.  According to analysts, that could have a large impact on British Airways bottom line as around two thirds of their profits are made from the business class sales.

Cheap holidays are getting more and more difficult to find now that high oil prices are forcing up the price of fares and increasing the airlines costs.

British Airways did, however, say there was a silver lining as their long-haul premium traffic figures, such as for example, for Heathrow to New York route, which is highly profitable, are slightly ahead of last year’s figures over this same period.

An analyst at Collins Stewart, Andrew Fitchie, stated that although numbers are disappointing, the growth in long haul figures is a definite plus point in BA’s favour.

In addition, British Airway’s performance in May was likely to have been affected by their disastrous opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport.  Starting today, Terminal 5 will take an additional 7000 passengers per day as one batch of routes switches from Terminal 4.  The routes being switched include flights to New York.