[canucklad]

If I was a regular flyer on CX, I’d be less than impressed with their decision to sardine their cabin.
Especially, when you consider the flight lengths that CX operate.
And full credit to BA, for so far resisting the temptation. .

[Travellator]

Don’t speak too soon BA could enhance their product at any time – by making the cabin more COSY due to public demand !

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

I understand crew will be on commission for F&B sales. So they’ll have a chance to earn more money (So I’m told). Not sure this has been mentioned in the thread – but could be why Cabin Crew may not be to worried by the new service delivery.

[JohnHarper]

[quote quote=764733]Look on the bright side. In next year’s Business Travel awards BA will be eligible to enter tas a Low Cost Carrier

[/quote]

Surely BA could only enter in a new category of “low cost service at a high fare”.

As I’ve previously demonstrated BA fares are way higher than easyJet’s.

Now a couple of comparisons with Norwegian for travel later this month:
PMI BA £259 Norwegian £49
ARN BA £171 Norwegian £73
BCN BA £84 Norwegian £61
FCO BA £287 Norwegian £65

Once again a complete failure on the part of BA to offer low fares and demonstrating yet again how disingenuous a company they are. Trade on one image and deliver another. Even their Vueling offering which showed up on the BCN route was significantly higher than Norwegian. When I have time I’ll draw a few comparisons with Ryanair.

I suppose at least BA would win in the low cost service at a high fare category as I don’t suppose there would be any other airlines that qualify.

[canucklad]

Interesting point about CC being paid commission Tim..

The question I’d ask myself if I happened to be a relatively new member of CC and working my socks off on a flight to Tel Aviv or Beirut and I’m not getting a chance to supplement my living wage by selling M&S sandwiches .

Is Why?

It all seems Ryanair tacky.

And with some BA staff being incentivised and others not, I wonder if they’re inadvertently causing a potential morale and clique issues within the cabin crew population, that will make the hats debate seem like a minor squabble.

[MartynSinclair]

If BA were to ask me, I would now favour more choice than the ridiculous and stale sandwiches offered in Club Europe. I would gladly pay to have a decent meal, after all, I still buy from Pret before a 2 – 3 hour shorthaul flight when travelling in Club Europe.

[canucklad]

I ‘m aware that it’s quite easy for me to criticise BA’s management for their bean counting linear and unoriginal thinking…….So, here’s a few non-linear thinking from me!

And to keep the accountants at Waterside happy, it involves a lot of mutually beneficial agreements.

And the starting point is to understand that in most cases creating WOW factors doesn’t necessarily need to cost money.

I’ve flown a few times recently on FlyBe and apart from an irritating delay, found the service welcoming and engaging.
In particular being talked through the BOB wine selection’s as if I was in a fancy Edinburgh eatery.

The nice touch at the end of the flight, when departing the aircraft was the offer a complimentary chocolate to say thank you for choosing FlyBe .
Cost to FlyBe, next to nothing……., goodwill gained …tonnes!

I get what you’re saying Martyn, I was brought up to understand the value of food. In other words, wasting food is absolutely disgraceful. Add to that people’s greed when things are free and you’ get the imperfect storm of western society.

Rather than unceremoniously dumping trays in front of you, I’d be asking for a touch of class and trolley to tray service. Forcing an individual to make a choice.
I’d also re-design the carts to encourage freshness and longevity.

[TominScotland]

JohnHarper, we know that, as a passionate fan of BA, you are trying to be fair and generous to our national flag carrier but…..

“As I’ve previously demonstrated BA fares are way higher than easyJet’s.” – true on the dates you selected and, in some cases, between different airports. The same is true of your Norwegian comparison. I have checked fares on different dates where LCCs were significantly higher than BA – today, I was looking to fly Glasgow – London next week. BA’s Gatwick fares were cheaper than anything that Easyjet had to offer and something like £3 more than Ryanair’s equivalent to Stansted – all were high, btw.

I don’t understand your argument that “Once again a complete failure on the part of BA to offer low fares and demonstrating yet again how disingenuous a company they are”. The high BA fares you quote are not base fares, they are evidence of high demand on that route on that particular day. All LCC’s raise their fares, based on demand – I was also looking at Dublin – Liverpool on Ryanair today and one flight had availability at £257 single…… Does your point above now apply to Ryanair as well? These are examples of very basic airline economics and the same methods are applied by all carriers. So perhaps save yourself the trouble of further meaningless comparisons……

[AnthonyDunn]

I must confess to a degree of incredulity at the nature of some comments posted above. For goodness sake people, we are only talking about sandwiches here.

In the meantime, having watched some of the railway series currently showing on BBC2 television, I am rather reminded of the selection of curled at the edge old-school British Rail sandwiches and the current utterly awful BA EuroTraveller “food” offering – most of which appears to end up in the bin. That is the real sin. For quite some time now, on those occasions when Snr Mgt and I choose to go in the back, we either eat beforehand or we pick up something at the numerous food outlets at LGW/LHR – all of which are incomparably better than the crap in a wrap offered onboard.

In the scheme of things, there are considerably more important points around my choice of flights including a combination of price, timings, routes, safety and reliability before (oh dear…!) the dreaded tier points mullarky and lounge access… The latter tends to militate towards sticking with One World carriers – but that does not mean exclusively using BA/IAG.

[IanFromHKG]

I read the original article and realised it needed a bit of translation:

“CEO Alex Cruz said that the move was … in response to customers asking for more choice and better quality in the short haul catering. ‘We have reached this point as a consequence of an increasing number of requests from our customers. Today’s launch is in reaction to customer response around choice and quality.'”

Translation: We’ve had so many complaints about our existing food we have realised we can’t even give it away

“Cruz said that although Club Europe passengers would continue to receive free food and drink, the airline would be looking at ways of improving that offering. ‘We will look at how we can strengthen the Club offering, and perhaps use the expertise of M&S, but for the moment there will be no changes to Club Europe.'”

Translation: Anyone stupid enough to pay Club Europe prices for the same seat as economy is obviously worth sucking up to a bit. But not much. So we’ll say we’re thinking about improvements, but of course we are really thinking about [pause to insert tongue in cheek] “enhancements”.

“Cruz was asked about the position with regard to passengers who had already booked short haul flights next year and who had been expecting to receive food and drink as part of the price they had paid for the tickets. He said ‘Luckily there aren’t a huge amount of passengers who have booked short haul flights for next year. We are sending out emails telling them what we are going to offer them.'”

Translation: Lucky for us, that is, since it means we won’t get so many complaints from the ungrateful sods when we tell them that despite flogging them tickets with a promise of free food and drink we are going to charge them after all. If we’re really lucky, they won’t notice that we have buried that information deep in a dense email that they will ignore, especially if we bombard them with other emails about how they might like to pay for lounge access, pay for seat allocation, pay for priority boarding, or anything else we can think of to gouge more money out of the suckers, so that they get e-mail fatigue and can’t be bothered to read it. And then when they do complain we will refuse to pay compensation on the basis that we told them all about it and they didn’t object. Bwahahahaha!!!

A BA spokesperson provided the following statement on that: ‘Customers booking short-haul flights are mainly focused on price and ease and those elements remain extremely competitive for our customers. We know food isn’t a driver for them when making a booking as they often pick something up on the way through the airport. Customers who are very unhappy about the changes are welcome to write to our customer relations team. As always we will assess each claim on an individual basis.’

Translation: Most of our passengers are so stupid they will assume we’re Ryanair anyway and won’t object even though we have screwed them over. And the more intelligent ones wouldn’t eat the crap we serve on board anyway, and would rather eat a stale sandwich from an airport shop. Anyone who is mildly irritated can sod off. If they get really stroppy and complain in writing we will run their complaint through our standard algorithm and send them one of the usual variants on our formal “sod-off” letters with the usual insincere guff about valuing their feedback, how we are responding to customer feedback, how we will pass their message on to the relevant managers – anything to make them sod off, in fact. If they get really, really stroppy we might, eventually, concede that they have a point and will probably offer them a couple of quid, which is all it cost us to provide their miserable excuse for a meal under the old regime.

[FDOS_UK]

Good stuff, Ian.

[openfly]

Let’s have a bet….
BAs BoB starts in January, beds in by April. All running well. Only throwing 1250 MnS sandwiches away at the end of each day!
Then in May, Ryanair announces loudly and flamboyantly “free food and drink” followed immediately by Easy and Norwegian. But BA stays as a BoB loco carrier….because of “passenger feedback”!!

[EU_Flyer]

Think I’m coming around to this BoB idea….

Eat well in lounge before hand and use the time on the plane to do things other than eat.

I presume the aircraft will be stocked every morning so the only wastage will be what’s left over at the end of the day (if anything).

I agree this devalues the BA shorthaul product and brand. But practically, I suspect it may suit many in the end.

Only remaining concern is that many passengers will bring their own homemade food on board which may (or may not) have a pronounced odour – which in a confined space for several hours may be a problem for some (like me) who have ultra sensitive smell.

Will BA be offering plastic bags at their lounges for take away?

[DerekVH]

I can’t quite get my ahead around the changes being made to on-board catering, even in premium classes, but at the same time we can eat and drink as much as we want in the lounge, I rather suspect it won’t be long before we see some further changes! I do recall having to pay an annual fee for lounge access in the distant pass – is that on its way back?

[FDOS_UK]

DerekVH

I remember those days, £50 per year for club membership.

[Author]

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