[MartynSinclair]

Swissdiver & Charles

ditto, I do – quite happily set office up for the day, service generally better than home and cheaper than the city!

[IanFromHKG]

Back to the original subject… With a slight twist, mark you, since I am CX Diamond rather than BA Gold. As it happens, I just realised that with the upcoming flights I have booked to the end of my membership year in July I will be just over 4,000 miles short of requalifying. So…. Yes, I am going to book a couple of weekends away so I can be sure of keeping the card, not because I am status-obsessed – I had in fact previously resigned myself to missing requalification – but because I am so close that I think it is worthwhile (and a good excuse for a couple of quick breaks!). I am lucky enough that CX still offer the equivalent of Anytime Access, but for me the main differences are the availability of seats, particularly redemption seats (we use our miles for upgrades, and without Diamond priority it would be almost impossible to do this most of the time), and as lesser (but still valuable) perks I get almost instant access to a real person when I call the hotline, most of the time CX happily give “my” priority level to bookings for the rest of my family, plus of course I get the better lounges and increased weight allowance.

However, browsing through the sites to see what cheap flights I could get to edge myself over the threshold, particularly since I need to take two, drew my attention to the massive disparity in costs over different routes and classes. This, by a rather roundabout route, brings me on to the point I really want to make, which is that it has brought home to me that the whole qualification system is completely skewed. Cathay originally looked only at miles, then years and years ago introduced sectors as well to acknowledge the fact that so many travellers were travelling weekly to Taiwan or China and were valuable to the company but weren’t qualifying on a miles basis. So you can get credit by flying a lot either in terms of flights or distance flown. But surely, neither of these is the point? What the airline really wants is MONEY. So why don’t they award credits according to the cost of the ticket? Yes, yes, I know it will be skewed by taxes and charges but heavens, they do a breakdown on the tickets, so I would have no problem with them simply counting the “fare” portion – say, 1 point for every US dollar you spend on tickets ex taxes/charges etc. Wouldn’t that be a better reflection of the passenger’s REAL value to the airline? It would also address the unfairness of a business class passenger paying several times the fare of most of the people in the back getting only a 25% uplift. For example, I just did a trip to the UK which cost about HK$50,000 – why should I only get one-quarter more “credit” for that than someone who paid perhaps 6 or 7 thousand dollars (once you take out taxes and charges, they probably paid about one-tenth what I did)? That approach would make much more sense to me

Incidentally, I was amused that my wife, after just one round-trip between LGW and HKG on Hong Kong Airlines, got silver status!! Presumably, at that rate, one more trip and she would be top-tier!

[HongKongLady]

Yes I agree the lounge access is indeed worth having, especially as you can use other one world lounges so as to gain access to the best is a given country, this is indeed the same with silver although in the business lounge rather than first.
Ian-Hong Kong how did your wife fknd the HK airlines experience. ? Maybe she could give us a review.
I keep thinking I may give it a try but just can’t seem to take the plunge !

[IanFromHKG]

HongKongLady, she was flying Club Premier and concluded it really wasn’t worth it. Although vaunted as 1-2-1 layout, the use of “pods” to house your feet and a staggered configuration mean that it is effectively 2-4-2, so that the beds are extremely narrow (she thinks even narrower than BA, although that isn’t a scientific observation!). The IFE was good, I understand, she thought superior to BA. The lounges aren’t up to oneworld standards. The service on the first flight was poor, taking more than 1.5 hours before the meal service started (on a midnight flight) and by this time she was so tired she was past having a large meal and asked just to have some soup. That took 40 minutes to arrive, and was cold. On the return flight, the service was much better, although that is probably because there were 11 FAs serving 16 passengers (3 in Club Premier, 13 in Club Classic). Again, all the food served was tepid. Given the fact that the discount compared to the established carriers isn’t that great, the lack of alliance benefits, etc etc, she doesn’t feel it is worthwhile, although Club Classic pricing is such that she thinks it is a very good alternative to premium economy on the established carriers (she tried the seat, and although it is cradle-style rather than a bed, she thought it was very comfortable), especially since it comes with lounge access. However, with passenger loads like that, I doubt if the route will last long…

[HongKongLady]

Thanks Ian-HongKong pretty much my fears confirmed. I thought the cost looked too high. I agree that to fill the plane they will have to make it more atractive price wise. Or it will go the way of the last all business HK flight.

[capetonianm]

“So why don’t they award credits according to the cost of the ticket? “

I’m not aware that any carriers do this and it’s a good point. It is easy to break down the total paid to extract the base fare, and from that, to extract the prorated value of each segment to the carrier. Most carriers have this data anyway so it only needs to be cross-referenced to the passenger. I suspect that whilst you see the current system as unfair, for the reasons you’ve pointed out, and I agree, someone else would see the new system as unfair, although I’d be curious to know why.

I think there would be some discrepancies within alliances over the way fuel surcharges are applied (part of base fare or not), and so on but don’t really see any difficulty with your suggestion.

[Swissdiver]

Bye bye BA? Not yet!

Today I received, to my big surprise, my new Gold card and I have to say I am quite sensible to the move (although I am aware it is commercially oriented, but this is the name of the game, isn’t it?). So it seems I am on for another year, on the good old B747 as long they are flying… Even though comments on my first post of this thread are still valid…

[VintageKrug]

B747 should be with BA until 2020…maybe longer.

[HongKongLady]

Good news about the 747, everyones favourite.

[Danwolf]

Just flew my first BA flight after attaining gold and in terms of service, etc…no difference whatsoever. Cabin crew still call me ‘sir’ instead of by surname (a small bugbear for me). The cabin crew on upper deck did appear a bit ‘junior’ though. I read on here somewhere that they were addressing training issues with staff being trained better for cw…so here’s to hoping…

Bearing in mind this half of the year my flying is light, I will see if my constant back and forth to Asia in the 2nd half of the year will show any difference.

[HongKongLady]

BA isn’t consistant with using names, I would even go so far as to say that recently there seems to be even less use of it in club. I have also found that I am no longer shown to my seat in First, I am not sure if this is because they now use the 777 on my favoured route so you have to shuffle through the galley to get to K side.
Cathay always use you name, I have even had it used in economy on a short hop and been served my beverage and asked my meal choice, first. The cabin service director always says hello which doesn’t seem to happen often on BA.

[Shamsh1]

Bye bye BA? It’s not too far away:

Poor Service (on the ground and in the air),
Poor connection times from other EU destinations,
Unacceptable transfer times at LHR, when having to change from T3 to T5.
Poor food (meat cooked to death, served far too late on night flights)
Being a Gold member in C or F doesn’t mean anything to BA staff, once you have paid your ticket.
Terrible service at Executive Club. Ignorance mixed with lack of knowledge; mostly a waste of time.
Outdated IFE and no improvements coming up.
Unacceptable redemption rules, no seat availability for several months. Within the last 12 months I tried to get CW tickets with Avios: HKG, BKK, PVG, SIN, SYD, CPT, GRU, GIG, EZE, DBX, SEA, YVR. No chance whatsoever, having a lead time of 2-3 months (only). Availability started at 6, sometimes at 10 months ahead. This is not a reward, that’s a penalty!
Fees for redemption flights. €600 on average for CW seat. This is the price for an Economy ticket on the same flight!
Oneworld is not an Alliance. It’s more an agglomeration of near-to-bankrupt-airlines, outside of Star.
Finally that most ridiculous announcement on board “please contact any of our one world partners”. Better never try.

If BA is not going to change thier attitude for Gold, Silver, C and F passengers dramatically, they will loose them. Especially those Non-UK residents (accounting for 30% of Exec Club Members), taking the burden to travel to LHR first, before connecting for a long haul flight will look for alternatives – and there are plenty. Emirates is knocking on our doors every other week and it’s just a matter of some more unpleasant experiences with BA and I drop my Gold card, which I hold since 1990.

[bacrew1]

Just curious about using the surname issue….
Is it all really of that huge importance to you… being addressed by your surname throughout a flight???
I honestly try to use names… and for me the perfect opportunity is when the meal order is taken, as there’s a space to write your name next to the seat number on the meal order form.
On a recent flight from HKG-LHR on our 77G, 36 out of 56 customers were Gold card holders… plus there were more Silvers on top of that… Who in your minds should get the priority of using their name the whole time??? Should it be done by commercially importance value??
It really is hard trying to remember so many names.. and I’m not making excuses for colleagues who just don’t bother…. For me personally, if my surname what constantly used by any one, it would frustrate the hell out of me, and I wouldn’t like it.
Are you aware that on long haul aircraft, the CW galley/cabin is the busiest part of the plane during boarding???
Regarding the comment of not being escorted to a First seat….. again I have seen this on the odd occasion, but most times on my Flights I have seen First customers escorted to their seat. Many times our frequent travellers refuse to be escorted and say they can make their own way. The only time when it’s impossible to escort someone is when there is only 1 crew member at the boarding door area….. where they can’t leave the door unattended, as the boarding cards for following passengers have to be thoroughly checked.

[Danwolf]

bacrew1: Thank you for your post, it does give a view from Cabin Crew’s perspective.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much, and comparing BA to my experience with CX and a few other airlines that I have flown. I have a friend who is cabin crew for CX and they spend time to study the flight roster for their flights, etc. If there are a large number of card holders on the flight, he just works a bit harder at memorising and/or keeping a sheet of their names. Its a small touch, but it makes the service that much more personable.

In my eyes, a little bit of effort goes a long way in building brand loyalty and good customer service.

I don’t think its particularly difficult to walk around with a roster – or even the meal sheet with passengers’ names on it and refer to them by their surname.

[FormerlyDoS]

bacrew1

I am curious, do you ever get to sample the premium cabins of companies such as Etihad, Cathay etc?

They manage, apparently effortlessly, to deliver a standard of service beyond British AIrways, for example, I am always escorted to my seat on EY and EK and that seat is not in first class, but business class (of which there will typically be 32-42.)

“Who in your minds should get the priority of using their name the whole time”

Anyone in a premium cabin. BAs competitors manage this, consistently.

A shrewd business man said to me, many years ago, that customer service is a philosophy, not merely actions.

[Author]

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