[EU_Flyer]

I read / saw somewhere that, on flights with a light economy load, BA are extending the CE curtain all the way back to behind the exits to stop people from trading down to a Euro Traveller.

Reeks of a PR disaster if true.

Anyone else heard this?

[Swissdiver]

[quote quote=798386]I read / saw somewhere that, on flights with a light economy load, BA are extending the CE curtain all the way back to behind the exits to stop people from trading down to a Euro Traveller.

Reeks of a PR disaster if true.

Anyone else heard this?

[/quote]

Not sure. I am flying tonight and could not find a business class seat (for points). So I ended up on an emergency exit seat…

[openfly]

The curtain might be far back due to a high return Club Europe load. The curtain position is usually set out of LHR/LGW/LCY to take account of the loads to and from the destination. Unless BA has its own ground engineers at the destination they don’t like to use third party engineers to move the divider due to high charges involved.

[Chiantikid]

As a senior crew member on shorthaul flights I can tell you that the curtain rumour above isn’t correct. The divider is changed along with the middle table by the cleaners both at LHR and the outstations

Back to the new CE food.
On a positive note I believe the general quality of the catering is better especially on the longer flights. However that’s where my positivity ends. We’ve all had enough of being led by donkeys at Waterworld by people with little care and no idea about the delivery of the service. On the shorter flights to be offering a choice on every service especially when we have upto 44 on an A320 to be looked after by just two crew is mad. Everything has been changed with no thought to the crew delivering it. We have exactly the same crewing numbers as the old service but this is a whole different ball game. Only two ‘trials’ were done on the ground in a perfect world scenario. It was all signed off ready to go. It was deemed ready but so was Buy on Board which still 12 weeks later is a mess.
On the ‘longer’ flights e.g. Nice or Milan all the wines are offered from big bottles. Only problem is the wine glasses are tiny as you all know, so customers are quite understandably asking for top ups constantly. I wouldn’t mind but the 4 wines on offer are to put it mildly worse than Lidl.
( as you can guess from my name I take an interest in the stuff!) It’s all smoke and mirrors. Having big bottles gives the impression to the uninitiated that they are better quality! If only. The old quarters were fine.
As for the flights to say Lisbon or Rome ( 2.10hrs ish) to be serving hot towels, menus, taking a meal order, a bar round, starters, mains, separate coffee etc is farcical on such a short flight. It’s basicly a longhaul service on a 2hr flight. We have just 4 crew to look after upto 80 passengers on a 767 for example and a gold list the other night told me we’ve no chance of doing it. I agreed totally.
On top of that the way our catering is distributed on the aircraft has to be seen to be believed. It’s all set up to be easiest for BA and DHL to put together with us the crew totally forgotten. It’s all over the place. We had no galley plans despite asking so have no idea where anything is. It makes us look like idiots.
We have just 12 tonics in the Club bar on an A320 for upto 88 Club out and back yet upto 40 gins and 40 vodka’s in the Club bar. Work that one out. As Tourvest totally control the economy cabin we cannot UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES take anything for Club from that cabin. Colleague last week had to tell a Club passenger that there were no tonics available and although there were tonics available in economy for her gin he had no authority to give her one. She finished up paying £1.50 for it!!! Unbelievable. ( It has been made very clear to us seniors that under no circumstances whatsoever can we write off anything belonging to Tourvest!) But we can get you out of a burning aircraft or save your life doing CPR!

We constantly feedback info to no avail. I could go on and on but I’d be giving away who I am which isn’t a wise move.
The BoB was a disaster and this is no better. Cruz has said he’s getting rid of half the people in Waterside as they’re all duplicating and triplicating everything. He’s right. Sadly, pretty much all the shorthaul CC have had enough. The vast majority of us want to do a good job in providing you, our customers, with a decent service and product but are constantly let down by whole teams of people whose only interest is to ensure they perform their KPI’s to get their bonuses. I feel so so sorry that people pay good money to be essentially IMO ripped off.
Finally I fully appreciate this should be none of your concern but I thought it right to at least try and let you regulars know what is really going on. Rant over!

[EU_Flyer]

Thanks Chiantikid and Swissdiver for your comments. Sounds like it was just a (perhaps baseless) rumour that I heard. In any case, I hadn’t seen that configuration on any of my own flights on BA.

[Swissdiver]

Thanks for sharing, Chantikid. Me too, as a regular passenger, I love the Spanish management! Well at least they know what we want since it seems all the recent decisions were the result of the passengers’ desires… I always said it, I don’t want a free drink. I want to pay for it.

[JohnHarper]

Well it sounds like BA have plumbed new depths with their latest catering ‘enhancements’.

I won’t be testing it out.

[paulkaz]

Chiantikid, your comments really highlight the frustration professional hard working employees endure with ignorant management.
Some one should suggest BA review QF’s domestic business catering where a 60-80 min Syd Mel or Syd Bne flight will get a full hot meal service with seperate wine bread and coffee runs. With out appearing rushed. 2 different catering managements for biz and economy is absurd.

[FDOS_UK]

[quote quote=799285]Chiantikid, your comments really highlight the frustration professional hard working employees endure with ignorant management.
Some one should suggest BA review QF’s domestic business catering where a 60-80 min Syd Mel or Syd Bne flight will get a full hot meal service with seperate wine bread and coffee runs. With out appearing rushed. 2 different catering managements for biz and economy is absurd.

[/quote]

Just out of interest, what is a typical fare for these QANTAS routes?

[first_class_please]

FDOS, a quick look on ITA Matrix:-

LHR-MAN rtn £197
LHR-EDI rtn £229

SYD-BNE rtn £888
SYD-MEL rtn £914

Quite a difference!

[Swissdiver]

That’s an expensive hot meal! That said, I fully agree with

2 different catering managements for biz and economy is absurd.

[N1IslingtonFlyer]

I fully agree with first_class_please and Swissdriver – did a quick check for late April on Expedia, QF SYD-MEL c.£334 BA LHR-ABZ c.£184, both flights around 1hr 35mins, so c.£160 is a very expensive meal service! Maybe many of the BA bashers on here need a financial reality check?

[Flightlevel]

The same situation the U.S. airlines were in before many went bankrupt, competing to the lowest common denominator ‘though now ofcourse they won’t go bankrupt on fares only on service and catering. They’re saved by the old proverb, used to sell cola “there’s another fool born every minute”! Australian airlines maintain their high domestic fares because they have no real competition.

[paulkaz]

My previous comments were not meant to compare the quality of BA and QF short haul services but rather that QF has mastered the logistics of a full hot meal service on a short flight.QF certainly don’t provide additional crew to do this because of Australia’s high wage levels.They use cheaper UK based crew on their ex LHR flights to DXB.
I’m sure rferguson would know the actual passenger/crew ratios.
As to QF and VA’s fare price.The fact that the top end or their bosses pay outrageous fares ( rather than say A$70 in economy on the same plane) shows the airlines have the percieved value right by providing proper wide seats with additional leg room and a quality soft product at a price people will choose to pay in huge numbers at great profit.
US airlines seem to be copying this strategy with their first class trans con flights.
Even heathrow express can charge A$52 for a 15 minute first class train ride!
QF and VA compete bitterly at the top and middle of the market and their surrogates jetstar and tiger at the bottom.The days of the duopoly are long gone.However the airlines do benefit from virtually no land based transport competition with vast distances,average highways and mid 19th century like train services.
A few years ago I flew BA ce to ARN returning in economy.I nabbed exit row seat on return ,a much happier experience at a cheaper price.Agreed I was lucky to get that seat though.
BA and QF obviously know their markets far better than I.QF has a small number of mainline destinations relative to BA and flood those with numerous flights with fixed biz economy seating numbers changing the aircraft size or merging flights on short notice when profitable.
BA has a huge number of domestic/ european destinations with varying CE demand daily requiring the same seat moving curtain divider strategy.
It ‘s interesting to see how each address those markets and the resulting success.

[AnthonyDunn]

Interesting.

As a subscriber to the Economist, some recent(ish) articles. These are behind a paywall (I think):

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/08/fly-scrooge from 19Aug16 which makes the point that it is very easy to lose a reputation for providing a premium service and a lot harder to win it back;

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/01/air-strike?zid=303&ah=27090cf03414b8c5065d64ed0dad813d from 09Jan17 which criticises Willy Walsh’s intransigent and truculent stance over BA’s relations with its own workforce; and

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21719832-although-airline-facing-plenty-criticism-its-strategy-looks-sound-british-airways 30Mar17

This latter one makes the point that fares have fallen by 2% in real terms over the last year and claims that as the UK economy slows down (err, tanks?) in 2017-18, the no-frills approach is a sensible strategy. Why does the Economist think that BA will get away with it? Because (a) the size of BA Executive Club (with its incentives to fly on BA) and (b) Fortress LHR with many of its time-precious business passengers prepared to pay more for direct services rather than go around the houses.

This all rather reminds me of the arguments around Brex**it. It is just that, in each case, by the time the truth becomes evident to all, it might just be too late and the irreversible damage will have been done.

[Author]

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