[DisgustedofSwieqi]

I would like to stand up for Honest Crew and say that this poster has always been straight as far as I am concerned.

Honest Crew is from BA’s heritage fleet and makes no secret of having a concern about some of the aspects of mixed fleet.

On the other hand, Honest Crew has always maintained a balanced and reasonable perspective on here and been a constant voice of sanity, as well as a good source of information educate the rest of us.

From my limited awareness of Japanese culture, it seems to make sense to have some Japanese crew members on these flights and I do not see a dig at mixed fleet here, just a recognition that they are lacking a fairly important component of an ideal crew, which once again is a management responsibility.

If Honest Crew wanted to stir things up, the appearance of a BA mixed fleet crew member, operating on a Haneda service, at Uxbridge Crown Court would be the perfect opportunity, but this has been left mute.

[RHMAngel]

I fly this route London Tokyo direct a lot through the years business and personal.

Initially I was super excited at the prospect of a HANEDA (HND) direct because its a pain in the butt for me personally flying onward within Japan, which invariably is from HND after 12 hours, another hour with transport between the two, hurray for this new route.

That was until – my friends/business did the route, its a horribly bad schedule.

Arriving in HND 5am (ish, nothing is open, limited onward (to Tokyo transport). Departing is 6:25am start…add in International check in time, and its sucks AM both ways. So my elated-ness was soon gone.

I won’t get drawn on the Japanese and staff hiring debate. But think it stems from the language-skill set and making this job /company attractive to want to use that language-skill set. It could be a real hornets nest to offer ££ for languages in short supply.

Anyway, BA please get a better slots between LHR-HND route, and this route would be worth its weight in gold, for a) being closer to Tokyo, and b) zillion times better for onward flights within Japan (which 90% go from HND). And BA route would get tones more business. As it is its simply not going to compete with the established LHR-NRT routes, while it has these landing/departure slots. TQ.

[Bucksnet]

The timings are the main issue with BA7/8, which I touched on in a previous post. When the Japanese government agreed to allow long haul international flights from HND, they only allowed slots in the early morning or very late at night.

This is why I believe that JAL should take over this route from BA, and depart from HND at say 1-2AM. This would allow a full day’s business and also dinner/drinks with business partners etc. The flight would also be a night flight and would arrive in LHR at around 5-5:30AM. The return could then depart around 3-4 hours later, so arriving in HND later than BA7 does now.

BA could of course do these timings but their plane would sit on the ground all day, whereas JAL could use their equipment on other flights or perform maintenance. JAL would drop their NRT-LHR flight, while BA would then fly to NRT double daily. Codeshares would operate on all 3 flights.

[BusinessTraveller]

We have covered the matter of Haneda’s international flights on a number of occasions over the past couple of years. As Bucksnet notes, the inconvenient timings at Haneda are imposed by the Japanese authorities and affect only long-haul flights.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/ba-to-launch-tokyo-haneda-service

Bucksnet’s suggestion that JAL operate BA’s Haneda service on a code-share basis is a sound one. That is what already happens out of Paris CDG where JAL flies into Haneda on behalf of Air France (although Air France is in a rival alliance, the two carriers have a long-standing co-operation agreement).

It means that JAL can offer better scheduling both for point-to-point passengers and those who are making connections at both ends of the route.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/air-france-offers-easier-domestic-connections-a

Note that ANA’s recently introduced B787 flight linking Frankfurt with Haneda adopts similar timings. This service departs Frankfurt at 1115 to reach Haneda at 0645. In the return direction, ANA’s B787 departs Haneda at 0100 and lands into Frankfurt at 0525. The Haneda service is code-shared with Lufthansa.

Alex McWhirter

[LPPSKrisflyer]

So how long did it take to turn yet another post in to a row about mixed fleet. Some people need to get a life.

[RichHI1]

As a business traveller I do nlot care how an airline organizes itself. I do not care whther they are mixed fleet, legacy crew, outsourced or from Tescos. I am fed up with htis obsession with a certain UK airline’s management processes.

I do however believe for safety purposes that all flights under CAA and FAA rules should be required to a: provide teh safety briefing either in person or by video in the primary language of the departing and arriving cities and b: there should be a minimum of one proficient speaker of the departing and arrival languages to ensure maximum saftey in the cae of any incident be it an aircarfty incident or health issue of a passenger.
AA have started doind this, on a recent flight to HNL from LAX there was a sizeabel group of Chinese visitors and AA swapped one crew member at lst moment who was native Chinese speaker and sure enough one of them was taken poorly (had just flown from PEK) and the flight attendant was able to discover it was just dehydration and reassure the passenger. We could otherwise have had to return to LAX.

[Hippocampus]

“So how long did it take to turn yet another post in to a row about mixed fleet”

Right from the faux innocent first post.

[LPPSKrisflyer]

It takes two parties to row, both are equally to blame, if anything the BA apologists more so. No one has to take the bait.

[HonestCrew]

Thank you DofS for sticking up for me in the face of a pretty extensive dig by OldChinaHand. (!)
BA’s business is service, I’d have thought that was plainly obvious and if they lose sight of giving the best possible service there will be no business and those shareholders would lose everything.

I am not one who harps on about crew being life savers over-egging our role, I simply offered an answer to the original question of this post and backed it up with a couple of genuine reasons.
I do have concerns with Mixed Fleet and do not like seeing threads turned into another pro/against tug-of-war. I happily highlight positives MF offer and offer an insight into the concerns we have for that fleet.

As for the common fainting of Japanese passengers, why be so hostile towards my observation? It’s not the sort of thing I’d sit and make up, I have better things to do with my time.

RFerguson is spot on with regards the cultural point. understanding Japanese service culture is extremely important and having Japanese crew shows appreciation for this, a major benefit for a service industry business which we are.

Rich gives a good example of why ‘national’ crew are important.

Overall this thread I believe has been productive one raising some good points.

[Bucksnet]

Thanks HonestCrew, keep up the good work.

[RichHI1]

Haaving flown to and from Japan with BA, UA, JL and NH I found ti interesting that the normally xenophobic Japanese offer Japanese and Western cuisine however the western carriers are not so forthcoming on their services. UA and AA will offer a prebooked Bento Box snack meal in first but none of them offered a full Jpanese meal alternative or sakes in First Class. Tp the original post, my cynical side would say that BA, AA and UA all know that they will never compare with Japanese carriers on service standards so why bother?

[IanFromHKG]

Any native English speaker who has spent any time in Japan knows that English is not widely spoken in the general population, so I find it extraordinary that BA would fly this route without a Japanese-speaking member of crew to deal with safety announcements, safety issues, medical issues, or whatever. Cultural issues are more of a marketing point, frankly, but having someone who can communicate effectively with a large proportion of the passengers seems to me to be a major safety issue – and as so many people comment on here, isn’t ensuring safety the number ONE priority of crews and airlines?

Separately, I want to second DoS’s statements. HonestCrew posts regularly but not so frequently as many others, and although s/he has from time to time raised issues about MF I never got the impression that s/he has any particular agenda, and I have to say that I find his/her posts among the most consistently informative and interesting of anyone on here.

[RichHI1]

Hai so desu …. BT why no kanji support on this forum. Baka desu ne…

[FrDougal]

Thank you BT forumites for putting this trashy poster in his place!

I assure you that your comments are nothing but wrong and offensive. Sarcastic yes with a pinch of humour and irony perhaps but “trashy”? Reading and beleiving the Daily Mail is trashy, I think making a genuine observant inoffensive comment on here about a topic not so much!

It was my intention with my post to highlight how BA clearly does not value the japanese market particularly on the HND route by not making a greater effort to support japanese customers. When the HND launched it was at the loss of the second NRT rotation. The Japanese based crew that operated this second flight still exist. No redundancies occured and now the cabin crew at this base spend extra time at home not flying (but still earning a basic income so not being used efficiently) when they could easily be flying on the HND service. But no, because of BAs complexity created by using MF crew on this route (aswell as the bizarre arrangement they had initially where the MF crew worked out and positioned home and vice versa occupying potiential revenue earning seats – another discussion altogether), the Japanese customer base are having to suffer, or at least make do!

Apologies if some of you had a sense of humour failure with my first post on this topic.

[RichHI1]

As posted earlier, the standards I have experienced of JL and NH in First Class are so high, I would be very surprised if Japanese travellers would travel BA. However I know he Japanese like foreign brands and have a findness for things British so perhaps they will.
As previously posted. Offering a service to Japan without Japanese speaking staff or Japanese catering is derisory. I know however that many airlines do operate Haneda as a second classs service in comparison to NRT or KIX. Always wanted to try the monorail as the NEX takes so long and they cancelled the Narita Shinkansen.

[Author]

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