You can now buy food and drink in British Airways short-haul Economy without pre-ordering

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• Jonathan says:

  14 Jul14 July 10:56

  Once again, another reminder of the failure of BOB, how poorly and quickly it was thought and rolled out and no real idea from the people who made the changes how at it would work in BA’s airplanes itself !

  Apart from a drink (where a bottled or canned one can easily be brought from a terminal shop), I can’t see many people jumping for non fresh food

  Destinations like Jordan, Egypt, Israel etc. always baffled me is to what the catering policy is, since all flights that are deemed long haul would have complimentary catering, and three mentioned above, are technically long haul, or classed as long haul for earning Avios and Tier points (by flight), and for APD

  • Tom says:

    14 Jul14 July 11:24

    Think you’ll find CAI, AMM & DME are now classed as short haul for Avios/Tier Points and get the full short haul product (including BOB). TLV is still classed as long haul and as such gets complimentary catering in World Traveller.

    • ADS says:

      14 Jul14 July 13:55

      I guess that’s what happens when you have serious competition on the TLV route, but not so much on the other routes in the region

• David says:

  14 Jul14 July 10:56

  ‘down’ to Edinburgh?

  • Andrew says:

    14 Jul14 July 11:24

    Well, if you regularly take the train, journeys away from London are always “Down”.

    • Char Char says:

      14 Jul14 July 12:39

      LOL

    • Dubious says:

      14 Jul14 July 17:12

      If you fly…
      Edinburgh Airport – Aerodrome elevation = 173 ft

      Heathrow Airport – Aerodrome elevation = 151 ft…

      Whilst I would usually say [tup’ north] when heading northward from southern UK, I concede that when flying EDI to LHR you are technically going down…

  • Dave says:

    14 Jul14 July 11:25

    In the UK you usually travel up to/ down from London, certainly on the railways. eg the down flying Scotsman goes from London to Edinburgh.

    • David says:

      14 Jul14 July 13:24

      Yes, but that is railway terminology, and within Scotland (excluding ECML and WCML) up is towards Edinburgh.

      Never casually used ‘down’ for flying myself. Sounds wrong.

      • David says:

        14 Jul14 July 13:32

        edit – *for flying northwards. I’d use down for flying south.

  • AJA says:

    14 Jul14 July 12:57

    I must admit I would say flying up to Edinburgh given that it is the more northerly city if starting in London but I just did a search of the internet and found this rather lovely explanation:

    When I was a child and asked my grandmother this question, she said it was all about importance. Regardless of where on the map you live, you still go up to London, because it’s the capital city.

    And in the same way, you go up to university, especially if it’s Oxford or Cambridge, and go down at the end of term. If you don’t work or behave extremely badly, you might be Sent Down.

    What you do if you are going home from Oxford or Cambridge, and home is in London, I have no idea. “I’m going down on Friday, going up to London,” presumably!

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-British-say-that-they-are-Going-up-to-London

    And I’m rewatching Downton Abbey and they’re always going “up to London” despite supposedly living in Yorkshire

    • Ben says:

      14 Jul14 July 14:53

      I think this might be one where the writer says British but actually means English (the quora q&a anyway). Nobody Scottish would say they are going “up to London” if travelling from Scotland.

      • Ben says:

        14 Jul14 July 14:54

        Although I confess to having no idea what someone Welsh might say if travelling from Wales.

    • Dubious says:

      14 Jul14 July 17:08

      I thought you get ‘sent down’ in a court because you are literally sent down the stairs to the cells below?

      • AJA says:

        14 Jul14 July 19:53

        I think you could be right.

    • Bagoly says:

      15 Jul15 July 08:22

      Cambridge is (to members) more important than London, so one just goes down to London.

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  14 Jul14 July 12:44

  To be fair the T&Cs of Speedbird Cafe always had mention of buying on board “(when the in-flight service resumes)” so I think a return to BoB was always planned, just a case of whether it was in this form or the usual trolley form.

  I agree with your comments on FT that this is a rather faffy way if you just want to order a coffee, but I can see it as a nice way on slightly longer flights if you want something more substantial.

  Actualy LNER has beat them to this and already offers something similar on their trains. I think Avanti has too

  • FatherOfFour says:

    14 Jul14 July 13:55

    I tried the Avanti option on Saturday. It wasn’t obvious it existed after logging on to Wi-Fi – I assumed there would be a big advert flogging the shop, but I expected they had BoB so I searched and found it.
    I found and added a coffee, then saw a deal. Adding a cake didn’t activate the deal; you had to add the deal and specify the components within it. By the time I found how to remove the first coffee I had added, I was fed up and didn’t bother completing the transaction. I hope BA’s interface is more intuitive.

• MW says:

  14 Jul14 July 13:23

  A bit too little but a move in the right direction.

  It makes me wonder who are those people who think up these policies and do they ever travel or even try to imagine what the travel experience looks like?

• Jonathan says:

  14 Jul14 July 13:28

  I thought the order in advance policy was great as my wife always spent at least £10 on coffee, snack, G&T even on a short hop to Amsterdam when we’d been sat in the lounge for an hour before 😆

• Dave says:

  14 Jul14 July 15:37

  I’m Scottish and would refer to going up to London. I normally use the train and it would be on the up line. It’ll then be on the down like coming home. I’ve never heard anyone say going up to Edinburgh on the train. From London you would take the train down to Edinburgh, or drive up north to Edinburgh. Not sure about flying though.

  • David says:

    14 Jul14 July 18:10

    Don’t know who you speak to. Unless very train related people, everyone I’ve spoken with would say up to Edinburgh, and down to London.
    Be it train, flying or driving.

    Only exceptions: someone who works for a railway company, someone who’s dad worked for a railway company. And one of them said they knew they said it differently to everyone they knew socially.

• Andrew says:

  14 Jul14 July 17:34

  Really was a ridiculous idea having to decide the day before if you wanted a cup of tea on your flight – I’m astounded that somewhere that was thought up by presumably intelligent business leaders at BA.

  • Fraser says:

    15 Jul15 July 15:54

    Or, worse, pre-ordering but needing to decide 24 hours in advance if you’d like a top-up!

• geoff says:

  14 Jul14 July 20:44

  Their media marketing team must be working hard to backtrack on the previous pre-ordering benefits of only carrying what was needed and reducing waste.

  A bit like Speedbird IPA being touted as brewed specifically to taste good at altitude and then being sold off to be drunk at home.

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