British Airways ‘to sell M&S food on short-haul’

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• Julie says:

  18 Sep18 September 16:22

  I happen to quite like the crisps and the White chocolate covered biscuits they do on the LHR – GLA route

  • Gavin says:

    18 Sep18 September 18:41

    I had the biscuits on the way back from Paris and they were great.

    • Sussex bantam says:

      18 Sep18 September 23:23

      My daughter loves them. I have to bring them home for her !!

  • Nick says:

    19 Sep19 September 07:10

    I think they are excellent too – really tasty biscuits which are a perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea. The crisps are also a suitable accompaniment to a gin and tonic, beer, whisky or a glass of wine.

• ankomonkey says:

  18 Sep18 September 20:36

  M&S feels a bit upmarket for BA these days. I think they align better with a Spar sandwich…that has been dropped.. and trodden on…and is a few days out-of-date…

• Nick says:

  18 Sep18 September 21:03

  Maybe an Aldi or lidl special is more suited? You know no frills, no service, be grateful for what your pay. The only exception being price. BA still insist on pulling people’s pants down yet fly ancient tin cans. The only wash they respond to feedback is don’t use them. Haven’t flown them for 18 months now

  • Callum says:

    19 Sep19 September 02:59

    The degree to which some people take rational business decisions as some kind of personal insult or abuse would be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic…

• barry cutters says:

  18 Sep18 September 21:37

  There is so much negativity about Ba on here. who else flies to all the destinations they do from our capital city (not 30 miles away) , with good frequent fights to all major European citys , plus most of asia and a huge quantity of airports in the USA? Who else gives you a flexile loyalty program allowing you to pay with miles for a real cash deduction, or book an outright flight with miles (ok they charge the taxes , but come on its peanuts for a premium flight in terms of what it would cost in real cash terms
  They haven’t even announced it yet and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon saying how poor it will be , and complaining about not getting a free bloody sandwich in economy (which i’m 100% sure they will honour) .
  Over all Ba is a great airline, with an amazing safety record who is modernising their fleet each year. The comment on the short haul fleet being old tin cans is totally unfounded.
  They are still much better than Ryanair, easy, Norwegian, flybe, and if you have status the perks are unmatched elsewhere.
  You have a choice to make when you buy your flight, you can fly with any airline. if BA are so expensive on that particular route at that particular time then clearly you should look at other options.
  Overall this BOB situation looks like an improvement where im sitting.
  I’m basing my opinions on flying BA weekly in Europe and to the USA. I also use Easy jet but not Ryanair.

  • BP says:

    18 Sep18 September 22:02

    Mr Cruz, is that you?

    • Adey says:

      19 Sep19 September 07:16

      ha ha!!!

  • Callum says:

    19 Sep19 September 03:03

    I prefer Norwegian to BA short haul. I find the seats marginally more comfortable and they have free WiFi.

    Gatwick (and their other hubs) are also easier and/or cheaper to get to for the majority of the population so I’m not sure why Heathrow is such a big selling point.

    • Genghis says:

      19 Sep19 September 12:34

      I really like Norwegian. I have nothing but positive things to say about them. However, a mate at work hates them after issues he had with them meant he had to hire a private jet at €21k to get to where he needed to go at a specific time from Oslo.

  • Will says:

    19 Sep19 September 09:45

    You’re not completely off the mark, but let’s acknowledge that if any airline owned the slots at LHR that BA do, they’d be grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

    They operate so many routes as they inherited a monopoly at the business airport in the U.K. (World at the time they inherited it)

    They’d literally have to be completely incompetent not to be able to make oodles of cash out of that.

  • Nick G says:

    19 Sep19 September 10:11

    BA A310 average fleet age is 14.4 years. In comparison Ryanair is 5.5 years for. 737-800.

    Just to show your counter view is utter crap BA 747 fleet average age is 20.1 years. So yeah I’d agree they do use old tin cans. I will , if good enough value still use BA but what it stands for is becoming more and more eroded by the month. Shame but the reality.

  • Monopolies commission says:

    19 Sep19 September 13:46

    Another reason people get annoyed at these ever creeping changes is they have no alternative!
    I seem to recall BA only re-introduced food on their shorthaul decades ago when bmi were offering it.

    Now they’ve lost competition from a service airline (rather than LCC) they’ve returned to minimum costs, minimum service and maximum profit margins. They’ll continue on the minimum costs drive until there’s either no more to cut or they have competition…

• Fenny says:

  18 Sep18 September 21:43

  So what’s the gluten free option likely to be? With no egg?

  • Peter K says:

    18 Sep18 September 23:28

    Ha ha, yeah. That’s my wife. I’m just gluten free and currently we get basically nothing short haul so any change is at least neutral, with a chance of being better.

• Marc says:

  18 Sep18 September 22:08

  I don´t understand all this fuss about it! Perhaps it’s a good reason to get rid of it! If you buy your ticket because you get “free food”, then you should seek professional help.
  My priorities are (in no particular order) airports, price and FFP (less important). I just don´t care whether I get a free drink + bag of crisps, but care whether the prize is 35£ or 65£. With 30£ I can buy a few gin tonics and crisps, or half a dozen of meal deals in boots + a couple of drinks. I’m not saying that BA are going to lower ticket prices (I’m sure they won’t) but comparing with easy (or ryanair, transavia or vueling).

  • barry cutters says:

    18 Sep18 September 22:23

    exactly.

    • Rob says:

      18 Sep18 September 22:57

      I think you will find that there is an element of national pride in all of this too, especially as BA is often the first point of contact with ‘Britishness’ for visiting tourists.

      • Callum says:

        19 Sep19 September 03:06

        The fact that the UK doesn’t have stupid national pride is one of our best qualities in comparison to the likes of America!

        No offence intended, but I would question the sanity of anyone who takes national pride in the provision of a free bag of 4 crisps or a couple of biscuits…

        • Will says:

          19 Sep19 September 09:54

          But you might take some pride in flying around a British made Concorde, or hearing the captain say “welcome aboard this British airways flight” in a quintessentially British accent while a lovely flight attendant asks “may I help you with your bag there sir”.

          I was on a Heathrow- Frankfurt flight on Friday and the cheese croissant was delivered with “are you eating?” Being barked at me and then it was thrown towards me.

          I would have sacked that attendant on the spot had I owned the airline.

          The food cuts are just a microcosm of the overall trend of declining levels of expectation at BA.

          The one thing I will say is it would appear that the planes are well maintained – not true of Virgin in my experience, I don’t fly them often but always had mechanical issues on every 747 flight I’ve been on with them.

        • Callum says:

          19 Sep19 September 13:02

          Do I really sound like someone who would be proud because I was welcomed with a British accent?

          I’d probably view people who would be proud the same way I would those who attend a Trump rally – it’s nationalist nonsense! (And is completely different to “feeling at home” etc when you step onboard, if that’s what you meant?)

        • Roger says:

          19 Sep19 September 17:07

          It seems we are all getting some cold feet here
          http://www.itv.com/hub/cold-feet/1a2292

  • harry says:

    18 Sep18 September 22:47

    My ticket price is nearly always (7500 Avios x 0.5p) + £17.50 = £55.

    So of course I care about the £12 of free booze & snack

    • John says:

      19 Sep19 September 05:47

      I thought you valued avios at 0.8p?

      • harry says:

        19 Sep19 September 06:38

        nope – my Avios cost me an average of [under] 0.5p

        the value I get from them is never as low as 0.8p – if it were that low I would consider cash instead due to the hassle of collecting Avios in the first place

        on my latest Sept 3rd 2017 tickets the cash price was £135 at time of booking so I got 1.57p/ Avios

        • James67 says:

          19 Sep19 September 13:47

          I too have tended to avoid paying in excess of 0.5p/avios in the past two years but I’m contemplting forking out 1.26p/avios for 45k of them in the current sale. This is to facilitate 2x ow CW seats T-355 because BA want an absurd £3k+ pp even in WTP for the flights I have in mind. Overall cost to me will be just under £1k plus 115k avios for which I paid close to 0p so it works for me as much as I hate the idea of buying avios.

        • harry says:

          19 Sep19 September 20:06

          I didn’t blink at buying 130K @ 1p LY & don’t remotely regret doing so https://headforpoints.com/2015/09/30/iberia-buy-avios-for-1p-promotion-extended-by-a-week/

          At the time I wanted to boost the old Avios bank balance & feel comfortable if something good came up.

          I’d advise people here to think seriously about doing the same if Iberia repeat it anytime soon AND they might need a decent Avios total ready for redemption action when the opportunities arise.

          Swings & roundabouts/ averages – I wouldn’t ever use them for under 1p of redemption value in any case.

• Chris jones says:

  18 Sep18 September 23:18

  I use my BA miles to go away with the family a couple of times a year.

  BA is actually a bit of choir from Glasgow or Edinburgh due to always traveling via London. but I the complimentary snack and drink does change your mind set from being stuck on a Ryanscare or easyjet flight. If BA become another easyjet (never going to be Ryanscare) then we have all lost something and I think the negative response is due to everybody realising that BA has given up.

  • Chris jones says:

    18 Sep18 September 23:20

    chore

  • Callum says:

    19 Sep19 September 13:06

    Ironically, I’d argue people making such a big deal out of tiny differences between Ryanair/Easyjet and BA are what lets BA downgrade the service and get away with it!

• Nick_C says:

  18 Sep18 September 23:22

  It’s just seems a shame that in turning itself into a Low Cost Carrier in the European and Domestic markets, it’s inflicting reputational damage on the entire brand, including long haul services where it still bears a resemblance to a Full Service airline (in Economy anyway).

  I wonder if they have considered different branding for the two types of airline they will be running in future. You could rebrand short haul with a new name. I don’t know what; British European Airways perhaps? Or if that is too close to the name of the long haul operation, they could come up with a funky modern name for short haul; Go Fly perhaps?

  When you have a large corporation, you get a corporate image. People expect to get the same quality and standards across the entire operation and are disappointed when that doesn’t happen. You end up judging the entire operation by its lowest standards.

  But thank goodness for competition. I’ll be switching my loyalty to Caledonian or Dan Air.

  • Roger says:

    19 Sep19 September 17:12

    BA express akin to Iberia Express….
    Many international airlines in Asia and elsewhere have done the same to survive.

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