British Airways confirms return of full Club World meal service

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• FlightDoctor says:

  17 Oct17 October 07:36

  Great timing. Flying to Toronto on 31st so let’s see. Just back from a trip to GRU with Swiss and it was a one tray service so not every airline is doing course by course yet…..

• Harry T says:

  17 Oct17 October 07:59

  Their very basic and tiny meals in club world have all been due to cost cutting, I disagree. Even the short staffing is due to BA trying to fire and rehire staff on worst contracts during the height of the pandemic.

  My main memory of recent BA CW flights is being hungry and largely ignored. The meals are so pathetically small and they often only have a few tiny carb and fat only snacks in the kitchen, which you have to serve yourself to complete your polished service (notable exception being LAX-LHR where they had several chobai yoghurts – excellent choice).

  One of the biggest problems with their service at the moment is the attitudes and the lack of professionalism or effective team working. On a recent cash flight LAX-LHR, my partner, who is a gold member, asked to just have a dessert for her meal service, as we had eaten in the QF lounge. Two hours later, after they served everyone else, she went to the galley to politely ask after her dessert and the crew argued amongst themselves in front of her.

• Olivia says:

  17 Oct17 October 08:03

  Flying to Houston and back over the next 7 days in club world so just missed this. It begs the question, when you’re put in a 20 year old seat with a compromised meal service for 4 figure taxes per reward fight, why in the world would you actively choose BA business anymore.

  • Rob says:

    17 Oct17 October 08:56

    Flights are full. I am off to an event in NYC in 3 weeks. The Virgin Upper Class ticket booked for me was £10,000 and when I did seat selection last week only 3 were available. This is 3 weeks in advance, remember.

    • Chas says:

      17 Oct17 October 09:15

      Which begs the questions: Which event? Who is paying that for you? What articles are you planning off the back of the trip?

      • Rhys says:

        17 Oct17 October 09:25

        Wait and see!

        • Richie says:

          17 Oct17 October 10:35

          My guess is it’s Delta hosting something to celebrate Virgin joining SkyTeam.

        • Rhys says:

          17 Oct17 October 10:36

          Nope

        • Rob says:

          17 Oct17 October 10:37

          If it was Delta / Virgin then the ticket wouldn’t have been bought for cash!

        • Richie says:

          17 Oct17 October 10:55

          £10k is a lot of someone’s money!, I hope they used an appropriate credit card. My next guess is a party to celebrate the opening of that new tall and thin skyscraper with a hotel on some of the floors.

    • newbie says:

      17 Oct17 October 14:25

      Was that the cheapest option for these dates? Or were you willing to pay more just to fly VS? I’ve seen a lot of volatility on this route in the past few months, with BA and VS often quoting 2x of what other airlines are charging on the same dates (e.g. UA 4k, AA 5k, VS and AA 8k – obviously that was just for a random set of dates I was checking).

    • Novelty-Socks says:

      17 Oct17 October 18:58

      Exactly this. E.g. £7.9k return in business to Seattle booked three weeks in advance.

      I manage a team of people who fly transatlantic regularly and fares are substantially more than the £4-5k I would have expected pre-COVID. Plus the flights are full! The demand is there to more than match the supply right now.

  • Hbommie says:

    17 Oct17 October 10:23

    We need to get back to ‘Old First’ v ‘New First’ levels of compensation when flying CW v Club Suite.

• Tony says:

  17 Oct17 October 08:10

  It’s a start, at last. Will BA now bring back priority boarding where Group 1 isn’t lumped into Group 1 to 3 and “bunfight boarding”….even First Class is lumped into this!!

  • Richard says:

    17 Oct17 October 09:37

    This should not be happening. If you’re at the gate when boarding starts, group 1 should always be called first. Remember that group 1 can easily be over 50 people when you consider golds and people on the same booking as them will be in group 1.

    If you arrive halfway through priority boarding, then you will be boarding amongst the other priority groups.

    If you arrive later than that, while general boarding is ongoing, you should find a clear priority lane.

    If it does happen, ask for the most senior person at the gate, take their details and make a complaint.

    • Sunguy says:

      17 Oct17 October 09:44

      Unfortunately Richard, this probably (for me at least) would be every single flight I have taken with BA recently – thats about 8 from 3 different airports…… the only exception was BFS-LHR and thats only because the lounge has a door directly onto the jetbridge and the plane just happened to be leaving from that stand…..

      • Andrew J says:

        17 Oct17 October 10:08

        Group 1 tends to only be called separately for long-haul.

  • Harry T says:

    17 Oct17 October 14:44

    Priority boarding no longer exists for Group 1 on short or long haul in my recent experience.

• DaveP says:

  17 Oct17 October 08:14

  My partner is vegan, lets hope when we fly next March the food offer for her will be appropriate.

  • Callum says:

    17 Oct17 October 09:44

    It will be if you pre-book it. If you don’t you’re unlikely to get much.

    • @mkcol says:

      17 Oct17 October 09:52

      Incorrect!
      Our inbound vegan meal from Vancouver had milk products clearly labelled in the ingredients.
      The main meal & breakfast was essentially the same: chargrilled aubergine with plain rice/in a ciabatta.
      Outbound was faultless.

• Tricky1 says:

  17 Oct17 October 08:15

  And hot towels ?

  • T says:

    17 Oct17 October 09:17

    Yes hot towels are returning 👍🏻👍🏻

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      17 Oct17 October 10:09

      In CE too?

  • The Savage Squirrel says:

    17 Oct17 October 13:51

    I’ve always wondered what are hot towels actually for on aeroplanes? Outside of an aircraft I’ve managed to survive for a rmodestly well travelled life of a few decades, without ever encountering or needing one in any circumstance ever?

    • jk says:

      17 Oct17 October 17:06

      I use them to clean the table and chair properly.

• memesweeper says:

  17 Oct17 October 08:22

  Somewhat unexpectedly I had a long haul Air France flight a few days ago, in J. The plane was, frankly, rubbish, but more than made up for by a superb meal. Easily the best I’ve had in the sky.

  • Rob says:

    17 Oct17 October 08:54

    I am doing an AF J tomorrow – will let you know.

  • Bob says:

    17 Oct17 October 10:19

    Which aircraft? Due to fly a 777 soon down to JNB in J

    • memesweeper says:

      17 Oct17 October 17:01

      I was on an old 777. They have another version which is newer.

• Laurence Lando says:

  17 Oct17 October 08:47

  BA needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to compete with other premium airlines. So now we will have real food? How about getting on with updating Club World seats, climbing over other passengers was a bad idea and is an insult to passengers.

  • Richard says:

    17 Oct17 October 09:42

    I agree it’s now out of date but your opinion that “climbing over other passengers was a bad idea” would have, I think been quite different if you were flying on the world’s only flat bed in business class.

    For quite a few years, BA’s ying yang design was by far the leading business class product in the world and many airlines would have loved to copy it if the design wasn’t patented.

    The fact is, years after, BA regrets patenting it as it would have meant many other airlines would have gone with that same dense product meaning BA would be able to keep it for even longer than they have.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      17 Oct17 October 10:12

      Have BA said they regretted patenting it? They could have ran with the design exclusively for a few years and then licence it to competitors after that if they didn’t want them all to go out and find a better (but less dense) design

      • Rob says:

        17 Oct17 October 10:14

        Richard is correct. The generally accepted view is that, because BA refused to let other airlines use Club World, the competition pushed on with developing other products which turned out to be better. I think everyone at BA agrees it was an error.

        • The Savage Squirrel says:

          17 Oct17 October 13:55

          However if they had’nt patented it and competitors had almost immediately copycatted and destroyed their competitive advantage then this most certainly would have been seen as an error!
          The error was NOT the patenting of that seat, it was failing to keep moving forward towards other even better products from that position of strength and huge cash generation – meaning that they fell behind dramatically. All airline seats are only temporary….

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