[CityRiskBoy]

I normally travel on the LHR-SFO route.

[Ah,Mr.Bond]

@CityRiskBoy – you mention earlier that ‘Unfort for me my route that I take every 8 weeks is only offered by BA, VS or AA’
Must make the point that AA do not fly to SFO!!.., your choice is BA,VS or UA.

[VintageKrug]

Or indeed Air NZ via LA, which is apparently quite jolly.

[rferguson]

@beckyboop: I’m REALLY happy that BA are finally addressing the dire breakfast service in Club World on the shorter long haul flights (ie plastic punnet of fruit and warmed bakery items).

On the trial flights a card is given to the CW passengers, similar to what you find in a hotel room for room service breakfast.

You basically tick one of three options: Option 1 – you will be woken no earlier than 1:20 before landing and you will receive the items you ticked on your card. Option 2 – The continental breakfast takeaway box. served no later than 40mins before landing. Option 3 – Maximise sleep and wake at -20mins before landing.

I hope its successful and rolled out to all routes.

[CityRiskBoy]

Yes sorry I meant to write UA……I dont want to fly to LAX and connect as LAX airport is a dive and it also adds time to my journey

[rferguson]

CityRisk please feed your thoughts back to BA….and your suggestion!

A lot of people think that ‘BA doesnt listen’ and won’t act on feedback.

This isn’t true. But the managers DO need evidence to make a case to the board and get things changed (ie a significant amount of complaints about a particular issue). There is evidence of this happening in the past – for example changes to the second service on the Indian routes and more recently on some of the longer African routes.

[NTarrant]

I thought the menu card idea on QF was a very good idea. We found that we awoke early and the crew asked if we wanted breakfast which we did. It was nice that what we ordered was brought to us on a tray.

I have found on a couple of occasions that the “courses” for breakfast in CW are not always delivered in the order they appear on the menu, perhaps there is a reason for this?

[SimonRowberry]

VK,

“Or indeed Air NZ via LA, which is apparently quite jolly.”

I love Air NZ, unfortunately I don’t have the opportunity to fly them much these days.

I remember a great ANZ flight in Business across the Tasman a while back. The Purser, who was indeed jolly (he was a credit to the airline, in many ways), announced “As we will shortly start our decent to Sydney, our in flight bar is now closed” (or words to that effect).

He then turned to the six or seven of us in Business (on a 767, if I remember rightly) and said “Not in this bloody cabin, it isn’t!” and promptly served another round of drinks.

I had commented on how good the NZ white was (a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, I think). As we left the plane he gave my wife a plastic bag with two 750mm bottles (of the wine we found later) wrapped in tissue paper and said “Some mineral water for you, as it’s hot in Sydney today.”

Yep, VK, they were a jolly airline and I hope they still are.

Cheers, Simon

Edited once to change “plaster” to “plastic” – is there now predictive spelling on this site? If so, it’s a pain!

[JohnHarper]

The breakfast box looks awful. Surely a punnet of fruit, a warm pastry and a coffee would be a much better offering – on a tray with cutlery and a napkin. It would also cut down on waste as the trays could be re-used whereas the boxes are destroyed.

[VintageKrug]

It would also cost a great deal more to provide.

In a tight market – and let’s not forget this is economy, albeit premium economy – where passengers will choose another airline based on a few pounds here and there, it would indeed be good to offer such a meal service, but the cost of the ticket would have to rise, or efficiencies made elsewhere, most likely in people costs.

The numbers may seem small, but in fact can be quite scary.

Unless such suggestions are costed they really are Pie in the Sky.

Take the above suggestion, maybe a a $4/meal additional cost once all the logistics and handling are taken into account, not to mention considerable extra work for the crew.

$4 for every BA Premium Economy longhaul passenger adds about $20,000/day to BA’s cost base, almost $7,000,000 per annum.

So where are you going to find $7,000,000 for your punnet of fruit?

[JohnHarper]

I very much doubt it would cost more to provide. Punnets of fresh fruit are cheap, pastries are cheap even at retail prices which BA wouldn’t be paying and they serve coffee anyway.

I think you’re talking nonsense VintageKrug though that’s not unusual by what I read elsewhere.

[VintageKrug]

Well, if not $7,000,000 how much?

A punnet is cheap, but my estimate of $4 is also cheap. And importantly it includes the logistics – you mentioned cutlery and re-useable trays; these cost money to process.

Another unnecessarily antagonistic post from JohnHarper, there is absolutely no need or justification to call my post “nonsense”:

JohnHarper 05/07/2012 10:48 GMT: “I think you’re talking nonsense VintageKrug though that’s not unusual by what I read elsewhere.”

[rferguson]

The ‘cost’ factor isn’t so much about the cost of the food items. It is the cost of paying the catering companies to assemble the trays. BA pays for the cost of the food items, then it is Xp per item the catering company places on the tray, not just food items but a table cloth, cutlery etc. Then of course a charge for delivering and loading the food on the aircraft.

Last year the Club World second service was modified (ie reduced) on the short haul flights in order to allow all the items needed to construct a breakfast ‘tray’ to be bulk loaded onto the aircraft for the cabin crew to assemble instead of the caterers. This was earmarked to save BA £400,000p.a.

[CityRiskBoy]

I agree with JohnHarper but not the tray/cutlery mention – This would add additional cost to BA and not to mention grief for the FA’s trying to do a swift service before landing.

It would be better for BA and also save them money, time and waste in having large boxes of croissents/pastries all boxed up. They can chuck in to the onboard oven for warming and then hand out by hand (as they do with the boxes anyway) with the breakfast tea and coffee run.

No additional time, no additional cost (if anything a massive saving) no waste (as no need for the stupid boxes) and happier passengers

[Spotter]

My wife did LHR – JNB return in June.

I cannot say anything about the outbound flight as her flight was delayed until the next day and she was rebooked on the later flight in WT.

On the return flight, however, breakfast was the usual fruit salad, full English, bread roll, jam, juice, etc.

[Author]

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