[SimonS1]

The full series of ‘The Inside Story of British Airways’ is on YouTube – interesting watching.

Profits of £350m, staff at Gatwick complaining about being the poor relations etc….and that was 23 years ago!

[BeckyBoop]

“King’s Way”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkMc1wvQiwg

You lot will love this one!!! 🙂

[VintageKrug]

I did indeed!

Well worth a look.

Quite sobering when you see what we tolerated as a First Class cabin as recently as 1990 when compared to the cabins BA introduced just five years later, and are now ubiquitous on airlines worldwide.

[FormerlyDoS]

The cabins may be better these days, but the service is not in the same universe.

BA in the 1990s was a classy experience, with roast beef carved off a trolley.

These days, there is not even assurance of one’s first choice meal.

[Binman62]

There can be no doubt that the changes which brought about flat beds were a step change however as someone who tolerated the old first class cabins I think that much was lost.
Back then your name would have been used, the crew would have known their menu and wine list backwards and as FDOS point out, you would have got the food you wanted with full silver service.
The advent of flat beds saw silver service disappear and subsequently First has declined to the product it is today.

[WoburnMan]

Christophertomas & BB – thanks for posting the thread interesting viewing indeed just finished the last one this morning. Does anyone know of anymore floating about on YouTube?

[CXDiamond]

Binman62 – 05/05/2013 15:04 GMT

You are so right, the hard product has notionally improved and the soft product deteriorated beyond recognition certainly at BA.

Others have to a point done the same thing thinking the hard product will sell the service and people won’t notice the soft product fall in standards, SQ did it when they introduced the A380 and many things we clipped away in F & C, they found they had quite a lot of angry passengers on their hands who were paying a lot more for less. They had the good grace to restore things to normal.

Sadly, BA have continued to cut.

[LuganoPirate]

It is interesting to see how things have changed over the years, and yesterday’s First seat is little better than today’s Business seat, but as so many comment, how service has deteriorated. Then food was served off a trolley and today it’s all been pre-prepared and reheated in plastic bags, even in F, which is partly why I rarely eat on board anymore.

In fact, and I’m amazed I’m even writing this, but I seriously wonder if it’s worth paying three times the fare to travel F over QR business with a stopover? Door to door time is the same, in fact with QR I save about 2 hours on the return due their early arrival in MXP.

It really shouldn’t cost the Legacy carriers much more to improve service and food offering on board, I wonder why they don’t?

[Author]

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