[Raffles99]

Friend of mine came back First Class from Cape Town just over a year ago. The stewardess working the cabin told him that this was her first BA flight and that she had just joined from Tui.

Lufthansa, AFAIK, has dedicated First Class cabin crew who undergo special training to, for example, be able to discuss all the wines and food options in detail. Good luck with that, albeit the £6 that BA allocates for F wine doesn’t give much wiggle room for insight.

1 user thanked author for this post.

fqtvgla

[NNoah16]

I cannot remember where I read about this same subject recently. The article stated that F used to be an easy ride for crew: Business men, boarding and going to sleep.
Now, it is older couples, maybe on redemption flights who want to enjoy the experience. Champagne, good meal, port – the works. Plus, they don’t sleep. Essentially from a staff perspective the article was saying that F staff got the worst cabin!

[maxgeorge]

That was one of Mr RF’s superlative and informative contributions.

1 user thanked author for this post.

DerekVH

[handbag]

Totally agree with a rferguson comments.

I left a couple of years ago after 32 years. In the last 10 years, I worked as the Purser in First about 3-4 times, as due to my seniority I had a choice. This was to always work in WT and not to work in First. I did regularly go and help out if WT finished before First, so was always familiar with service.

From a passenger point of view I can see that it is a good idea for Crew to be familiar in all Cabins.

As a Purser I was able to make the decision to keep my hand in all cabins by choosing to be the one that helped out. Unfortunately there were a lot that didn’t.

Hopefully the new system will keep everyone familiar.

[rferguson]

The other issue with the lgeacy fleet and performance was there was no method of performance feedback or review. Friends in other industries are gobsmacked when I tell them how many actual performance reviews I have had with a manager during my time at BA – ZERO. Not one. In fact, I can count on one hand the actual number of times I met with my manager for any reason over 20-odd years.

BA did later introduce performance review on the cheap. Some software that collated SMS feedback from customers that was then presented on an individual ‘dashboard’ and rated us against our peers. But this feedback was not individual. It was an average of the entire crews performance on a given flight. So the lazy crew member that peeved someone off on the upper deck could influence your own ‘dashboard’ even though you were doing everything to a perfectly good standard. And again, if you performed at the top consistently, what would you get? Nothing. The bottom consistently what would happen? Nothing.

The only individual method of evaluating my performance onboard was an ‘inflight assessment’ that a CSD or CSL would perform once every few months but these were a box ticking lark and counted for – nothing in terms of development. Because there was no performance review or appraisal. There was no promotion within the legacy fleets available (and even when there was these ‘IFA’s’ were not allowed to be used in the recruitment process) there were no incentives for performing better than the Cabin Crew member that did the absolute bare minimum EVERY day. You got paid the same, had the same pay increases. Sometimes on the aircraft I would feel the need to be EXTRA nice to compensate for a colleagues attitude that was awful.

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Johnnyg, fatbear, Jacob, ASK1945, handbag, Montysaurus

[esselle]

[postquote quote=1100144]

In the mid 80’s BA put every single member of cabin crew through a programme called “Putting People First”. The basic philosophy of this programme was that, if you want to put your customers first, then you have to put your people even more first.

It was a massive investment, and fully reflected a culture of excellence which was driven top down in those days, which is now long absent.

5 users thanked author for this post.

fatbear, Jacob, ASK1945, handbag, Montysaurus

[GordyUK]

Penny will NOT be happy having to work WT 😉

[Author]

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