[FDOS_UK]

Dear Mr FDOS,

I’m writing to thank you for your continued custom in 2017. Your business is incredibly important to us and we don’t take it for granted. We have learned some lessons in this past year and where we have fallen short, we have listened and are putting things right.

Have they bought a UPS for their data centre?

British Airways is and always will be a premium airline and we are investing £4.5bn over the next 5 years to give you the best flying experience possible. One example of this is our transformation of the dining and bedding in our Club World cabins. This has started on services to and from New York and will roll out across all routes in the coming year. We are also committed to improving your experience on the ground and have opened a series of new lounges including Gatwick and Boston, opened our First Wing at T5 and introduced premium car transfers between terminals at Heathrow.

If you have to say you are a premium airline, you are probably not and the NPS scores are likely making that clear.

I couldn’t care less about new bedding in CW – what a bout a decent new seat?

The F Wing is genuinely good, but lounges at Boston and Gatwick are irrelevant to me and I have not experienced the permium car service, so that is, too.

We know how important it is to you to get away on time and, in the course of last year, we have strengthened our position as the most punctual of the three-big short-haul carriers flying from London. Additionally our baggage performance in 2017 was at its best level for a decade.

That’s why every flight I took to Manchester in 2017 was at least 30 minutes late? At least my first flight in 2018 was not, it was 55 minutes late.

We are also committed to giving you choice by offering more low fares than ever before. Additionally this month we will be introducing improved catering in our long-haul World Traveller cabin, and we plan to install at-seat power points in all cabins as well as the best wifi in the sky.

Strange he doesn’t mention adding more seats to 777s

This year, we will be taking delivery of 18 new aircraft, including our first Airbus A320 and A321 ‘NEOs’ with their significantly improved environmental performance.

Are those the ones with the reduced seat pitch and some non-reclining seats? I’d have thought he’d be proud to showcase those enhancements 😉

We will also be operating our biggest-ever route network, with new long-haul services launching to Nashville and the Seychelles. On short-haul, we will be adding the Greek island of Kefalonia to our network – with twice-weekly flights between May and October from Heathrow. Our new summer routes, which also include Figari in Corsica and Almeria, mean we will be flying 39 more routes in 2018 than we did in 2016. And that is without including our new slots at Gatwick. We look forward to choosing which destinations to fly them to, and we will let you know as soon as we can.

As I don’t fly to any of those destinations, they are about as useful as a chocoloate fireguard to me.

So, there is a great deal to look forward to for all of us.

Well, some people, but not if you are on a densified 777 or 32x NEO.

Once again, thank you for your valued custom, we look forward to welcoming you on board soon and I would like to wish you a very Happy New Year.

I’ve just blacklisted you for Spam, so have a nice year

Kind regards

Alex Cruz
Chairman and CEO

[capetonianm]

Dear Mr FDOS_UK

Thank you for your kind comments.

We have a team of corporate strategic consultants assessing a viewpoint on the feasibility of installing a UPS at our data centre. I am expecting to have the report within a reasonable time frame. In the meantime, I can assure you that the cleaners have been fully trained on the inadvisability of unplugging any electrical connections, and the plugs have been securely taped to the wall.

We retain our position as a premium airline, however, we have to offer our products to the widest possible market sectors and to this end, we will broaden and extend our scope so that all market segments can enjoy our services to a wider range of destinations.

We will as per your suggestion install a new seat in CW. This will be for use of cabin crew who will test it for suitability.

We are doing everything we can to ensure timely departures on all routes. Our punctuality record on the Heathrow to Manchester route is the best of all operators who fly the route.

We do hope you will enjoy the lounges at Boston and Gatwick in due course.

We are pleased that you will be enjoying our new aircraft operating the high density configuration on our bucket and spade routes. This enables parents to be closer to their children and is an enhancement, as it means that they will not have to pay extra to sit closer to their children, or other people’s children.

Thank you for your suggestion to install chocolate fireguards in our aircraft. We are giving this serious configuration, or do I mean consideration? This might be a useful enhancement to our very popular M&S BoB offerings in the event of a fire on board.

Finally, I will have a word with my partner at the churros stand and see if we can add Doner Kebab and Spam to our extensive offering.

Yours sincerely

Alex Cruz.

[nevereconomy]

Why do you people torture yourselves so with “The BA thing” ? I fly BA when they offer me the most convenient direct service to my most frequent destinations, either as themselves or as a codeshare, or where they feed me into maybe better OneWorld partners. My AVIOS on BA give me the opportunity to fly in a Premium cabin at a very modest cost to a huge choice of destinations. I have chosen to accept less than perfection. If none of the above turns out to be the case I will choose someone else. I suggest that you all do likewise until the day that BA management decides their currently very profitable model is not the way to go – not saying that won’t happen, but for now no amount of whining will change their direction.

[JonathanCohen09]

Nevereconomy – a very good question, I wonder what some of the answers will be?

[FDOS_UK]

Why do you people torture yourselves so with “The BA thing” ?

Can’t you tell the difference between a piss take of a really cr*p piece of management bs/spin and ‘self-torture’? I’m not trying to change BA, just make a mockery of this delusional piece of ****, that came unsolicited into my mailbox (but will not anymore, as the address is now blacklisted).

I’m BA GCH, but also use other airlines, none of whom send me such compost.

I have loyalty to no airline and will use whoever offers the best value.

[Defcon5]

Enjoyed that response @capetownianm ?

[esselle]

My email from Cruz came with a link to a voucher for a half price doner kebab on my next flight, but I couldn’t get it to open.

[openfly]

Snr Cruz punctuation is odd…what does “three-big short-haul carriers” in the third para mean??! I was taught at Brockham Primary School to read what I had written, at the age of 8!

FDOS, I hope you have sent your comments to Cruz directly! Great fun….thanks for the morning giggle.

[Tom Otley]

There may be a few readers here who are wondering what all this is about (especially if they did not receive the email).

Dear Mr Otley,

I’m writing to thank you for your continued custom in 2017. Your business is incredibly important to us and we don’t take it for granted. We have learned some lessons in this past year and where we have fallen short, we have listened and are putting things right.

British Airways is and always will be a premium airline and we are investing £4.5bn over the next 5 years to give you the best flying experience possible. One example of this is our transformation of the dining and bedding in our Club World cabins. This has started on services to and from New York and will roll out across all routes in the coming year. We are also committed to improving your experience on the ground and have opened a series of new lounges including Gatwick and Boston, opened our First Wing at T5 and introduced premium car transfers between terminals at Heathrow.

We know how important it is to you to get away on time and, in the course of last year, we have strengthened our position as the most punctual of the three-big short-haul carriers flying from London. Additionally our baggage performance in 2017 was at its best level for a decade.

We are also committed to giving you choice by offering more low fares than ever before. Additionally this month we will be introducing improved catering in our long-haul World Traveller cabin, and we plan to install at-seat power points in all cabins as well as the best wifi in the sky.

This year, we will be taking delivery of 18 new aircraft, including our first Airbus A320 and A321 ‘NEOs’ with their significantly improved environmental performance.

We will also be operating our biggest-ever route network, with new long-haul services launching to Nashville and the Seychelles. On short-haul, we will be adding the Greek island of Kefalonia to our network – with twice-weekly flights between May and October from Heathrow. Our new summer routes, which also include Figari in Corsica and Almeria, mean we will be flying 39 more routes in 2018 than we did in 2016. And that is without including our new slots at Gatwick. We look forward to choosing which destinations to fly them to, and we will let you know as soon as we can.

So, there is a great deal to look forward to for all of us.

Once again, thank you for your valued custom, we look forward to welcoming you on board soon and I would like to wish you a very Happy New Year.

Kind regards

Alex Cruz
Chairman and CEO

[capetonianm]

I’m not ‘torturing myself’ over BA, I enjoy taking the mick and reading about, and commenting on, their latest inanities.

As others do, I use BA if and when it suits me, and if it’s significantly cheaper than competitors. BA are the only operator with direct service year round LON-CPT and that suits me. I usually pay a cheap PE or Business fare, I don’t expect much in terms of comfort, food, or IFE, it’s only an 11 hour flight, and I will spend the money I’ve saved on something more worthwhile than a night on an aeroplane, for example a few days at a good hotel or some other indulgence. I could do that anyway, but I get a bit of a kick out of the idea that it’s with money I’ve saved by foregoing a bit of extra and unnecessary comfort. In my younger days I slept on wooden benches, luggage racks, travelled 3rd class in Asia and Africa by train, used Matatus and stinky buses in East Africa, and so on, so I’m pretty hardened to it all and in comparison to that having a padded seat is luxury! At least with BA you know they are safe, professional, and reliable.

A couple of months ago when I came back from CPT on BA my onward flight from LHR was disrupted due to WX and I was truly impressed by the way in which the ground staff handled the situation, which ended up with me choosing to abort the last segment and recover my baggage. And this despite them being under a lot of pressure as a number of flights had been disrupted that morning and some of the passengers were being aggressive and abusive towards the BA personnel.

After that I wrote a letter to Customer Services in which I criticised some aspects of a couple of recent flights but one paragraph of my letter to them read, and I named a couple of the people concerned.

I have often criticised BA, but the way you looked after me on that morning was outstanding. Nothing but help, kindness, and professionalism from every BA employee with whom I had contact. The cabin crew on the BA058 showed similar dedication to customer service.

[FaroFlyer]

[quote quote=845750]Why do you people torture yourselves so with “The BA thing” ? I fly BA when they offer me the most convenient direct service to my most frequent destinations, either as themselves or as a codeshare, or where they feed me into maybe better OneWorld partners. My AVIOS on BA give me the opportunity to fly in a Premium cabin at a very modest cost to a huge choice of destinations. I have chosen to accept less than perfection. If none of the above turns out to be the case I will choose someone else. I suggest that you all do likewise until the day that BA management decides their currently very profitable model is not the way to go – not saying that won’t happen, but for now no amount of whining will change their direction.
[/quote]

Completely agree with you. I have become very disenchanted with this forum as it does not provide the interaction that I expect from a forum entitle Business Travel Forum. I glanced at it yesterday and 6 of the first 10 subjects listed were BA related, which I consider disproportionate.

Because I have become so disenchanted at this forum I looked around and found FlyerTalk. It is more USA biased, because of the balance of the “English” speaking global population, but in spite of this most comments were balanced and every airline and hotel & car rental covered. In a couple of days I learned how to earn Avios on Vueling and Aer Lingus and combine them with BA Avios. I also learned how to get Hertz to status match my Europcar VIP status

It was fairly obvious to me at least that your comments were not directed at this topic but at the comments about BA & IAG in general. We all knew it was a micky take. The reaction to your comments illustrates exactly how right you are in what you said.

I suggest that we just leave the ABBA brigade to it.

[FDOS_UK]

Because I have become so disenchanted at this forum I looked around and found FlyerTalk.

The Flyertalk BA forum has polarised opinions (pro and con) that are quite extreme, as well as levels of rudeness that we haven’t seen here since the days of ‘he who must not be named’. Some of the anti-BA conspiracy posts are quire remarkable, I suggest you read the GGL concerned that cabin crew were trying to move him under false pretences.

Good luck in your experiences over there.

On here, most of the negative comments are based on facts, arising from things such as (1) BoB being introduced in lieu of free F&B, without any free tea or coffee (unlike SK) or a drink for higher tier BAEC members (unlike AA), (2) unreliable IT systems, (3) seat pitch being reduced, (4) moving from 9 across to 10 across seating on some 777, (5) no longer through checking bags on different PNRs etc etc. and doing all these things whilst claiming to be a premium airline.

As to BA featuring in 6/10 of the first posts, why do you think BA tends to position at the top end of the scale in the BT Awards? Perhaps because it is the UK’s main airline and thus over represented in more ways than one?

[FaroFlyer]

Hi FDOS,

Your comments confirm my view that this forum should be renamed UK BTForum as it is totally UK-centric. If that is what the host and contributors want then good luck. It is interesting that you look at Flyertalk and immediately comment on the BA pages. I am not only interested in BA. I am not just interested in airlines.

If you look at my comments about BA & IAG over the years you will see that I have never praised them, but have merely pointed out that they, and IAG, are in business to make a profit, and do so. The strongest comments that I have made about BA refer to their CW product and there I have merely said that they have an acceptable product at an acceptable price.

[FDOS_UK]

Your comments confirm my view that this forum should be renamed UK BTForum as it is totally UK-centric.

I don’t think that’s correct, but accept the UK is overrepresented by regular contributors (as I said).

It is interesting that you look at Flyertalk and immediately comment on the BA pages.

This was based on on your comment “I suggest that we just leave the ABBA brigade to it.”. As I said, you will find plenty of ABBA members on Flyertalk.

[capetonianm]

There seems to be an element here who would wish to suppress freedom of speech. I would have thought that as long as nothing posted is libellous, abusive, illegal, or in contravention of privacy laws and ethics, posters can express any views they want.

Obviously BA will be ‘over-represented’ in a forum which has largely UK based contributors. The fact that a lot, but by no means all, of the comments BA attracts are negative speaks for itself.

[Author]

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