British Airways confirms return of full Club World meal service

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• newbie says:

  17 Oct17 October 14:22

  What’s shocking to me is that BA keeps charging a significant premium – one a couple of recent occasions, BA CS prices were double of UA’s and almost double of AA’s – yet service-wise they lag behind the other airlines on the London – New York route. If you can’t deliver a proper level of service, then why don’t you also reflect that in the price…

  • Harry T says:

    17 Oct17 October 14:53

    The priority of BA for some times has been to strip away as much service and quality as possible whilst capitalising on their slots to charge the highest prices conceivable. If prices are that high, it is because people will pay them. There is a lot of revenge travel at the moment, with cash accumulated from fiscal stimulus and furlough, as well as reduced outgoings during lockdowns. The hotel groups and airlines may have to make some genuine efforts again when the lockdown cash is burnt and the global recession hits.

    • KevinS says:

      17 Oct17 October 17:22

      If thick Lizzie has her way, the recession will be even worse in the uk than other countries!

  • John says:

    17 Oct17 October 15:04

    Why should they lower prices if people are paying them

    • will says:

      17 Oct17 October 15:39

      On one hand I can’t disagree with prices, especially given their post covid debt situation.

      On the other hand the marginal cost of delivering a good louge/on board product must be very small compared to the fares currently being paid.

      Somewhat related I tend to think it suits the airline industry to have been on a reduced schedule this year whatever the reason, demand is high and supply of flights restricted so they have been able to recoup some post covid losses without having to run the risk of scaling up to a full schedule and demand falling off rapidly from now onwards.

      • Rob says:

        17 Oct17 October 18:26

        This is the key, of course.

        90% of the costs linked to your CW flight are the aircraft lease cost and the fuel cost. The rest (crew, food etc) is loose change. Back in my banking career we looked at buying an airport caterer and the sums paid for business class meals were shockingly low. They get cut because you CAN’T cut your fuel or lease costs, so trashing the food and drink is the only thing you can do. It makes virtually no difference, of course, and just alienates customers.

        • AJA says:

          18 Oct18 October 08:18

          I echo Rob’s comments re the food as about the only cost airlines can cut everything else is safety related so can’t be. I used to work at one of the major airline caterers and the money we got for the food supplied was very small indeed, a case of very high volume but very low margin ie any profit made is based on lots of meals sold. It’s more of a logistics business than a catering operation but also very easy to lose money as the airlines could cancel orders as little as 6 hours before a flight. The pandemic must have been brutal for airline caterers if my experience of the couple of weeks following the Iceland volcano air space shut down was anything to go by. Then again the alcohol was all tax and duty free which made me realise how inflated the retail prices are, which is also why LPGS is (was) free flowing in the air and in the airport lounge.

    • Tom says:

      17 Oct17 October 15:41

      John, if that were true then BA would not now be upgrading the meal service.

      This has certainly been a factor in me choosing other airlines in the last year or so.

    • newbie says:

      17 Oct17 October 16:01

      My case – I recently went out of my way to book BA (more expensive than other options). Very disappointing trip, but thought it was a one-off. Second disappointing trip – looks like it’s a pattern. My upcoming bookings for LHR-NYC are not on BA. I’ve been a BA Gold for over a decade and this may be the first time I don’t requalify, even though I plough the UK-US route in J once or twice a month every month.

      My personal view – the old Club World had hard product lagging behind competition, but great soft product. Now the hard product is great (CS), but soft product lags behind others.

      • AviosNovice says:

        18 Oct18 October 07:07

        Newbie, do you mind if I ask who you’ve chosen instead? If not BA…?

  • SpeedBird002 says:

    18 Oct18 October 00:44

    “Servicewise they lag behind…” – AA’s hard product is outdated compared to BA’s, especially on the JFK-LHR route. Add to that (i) AA crews that consistently give off the impression that they would rather be anywhere else, (ii) a “flagship lounge” at JFK that feels like Penn Station during rush hour (pre-covid), (iii) the joy of going through T3 and getting one’s steps in for the day walking to/ from the gate, (iv) the lack of anything close to the T5 First Wing and one wonders how BA is lagging behind. They’re in fact leading the One World pack. That said, when the CCR is not an option T3 has better lounges. But again, those are provided by other OneWorld carriers not AA.

    • Rob says:

      18 Oct18 October 07:41

      I think we’re flying AA to New York to look at the new T8 lounges at the end of November, so we’ll see.

• NickS says:

  17 Oct17 October 15:17

  Hi Rob, we flew LHR-LAX yesterday on the BA A350 morning 09:45 departure and will be returning early Nov on a 777 on-site both with club suites so will report back, Have to say yesterdays flight was super comfortable (recommend row 9 or 10 windows as both have two full windows, would avoid Row 1 centre seats as everyone coming and going to the loos or galley have no choice but to stare into your little pod due to aisle width being narrow. Would also avoid last row 11 of main cabin due proximity to toilets and club kitchen area. Food (Ist meal lunch after a separate earlier drinks service) was one tray but nevertheless pretty decent. Can recommend the beef cheeks. Yes you have to eat the starter which is very small but tasty after or with the main course to avoid main getting cold. The cheese and choc mousse also pretty good. Certainly fine for me for an 11 hour flight. Asked for and got a glass of white and red on the tray plus a glass of water. All nice large portions so had no need to ask for more, however the cabin crew were great and would have brought more if I’d asked. Real old school BA service from a young crew so very impressed. All were Smiley and chatty and very pleasant. After lunch they did a separate round of cups of tea/ biscuits mid flight and the pre landing meal was another one trayer a full meal again without the cheese basically and had a really excellent prawn curry. There was another drinks pass. Based on this I would never really see the point of travelling in F (if you can ever get a seat nowadays anyway using Avios) Yes the F suite is a bit bigger but the Club suite is so well designed the slight space reduction really doesn’t matter and not having to climb over people is a HUGE upgrade. Not only that but the flight left exactly on time and got into LAX an hour ahead of schedule (I know that’s down to the winds rather than BA) so it was first long haul in so no immigration delays and our Global Entry status didn’t really save us any time (but normally does really help). Even got two of our three bags off the carousel within minutes of leaving immigration (club tags usually mean your bags will be off last IMHO) only minor downside was waiting for the third bag which took another 45 mins to appear with the last few but hey ho at least they all arrived!! (NB we used the twilight bag checkin the night B4) No queues for customs as no one collecting the customs declarations so that saved more time. A great experience overall

  • Harry T says:

    17 Oct17 October 19:32

    The main reason to travel in First is to get a proper meal and alcohol at the moment, with roughly business class levels of service. Club at the moment on long haul is premium economy service at best.

• Darren says:

  17 Oct17 October 16:14

  I know off topic, but when will hot towels come back to CE? Or will they not?

• Gary says:

  17 Oct17 October 16:34

  I hope it isn’t like the Club World product they brought in 4 years ago.
  Total disaster,took too long.
  Customers didn’t like it and crew hated delivering it.

• Frankie says:

  17 Oct17 October 21:10

  What happened to BA CW offering dine on demand like Qatar? I feel like LOLing for even asking

• namster says:

  17 Oct17 October 22:35

  avoid cw service on A380. It is most unpleasant experience , CS in the a350 and 777 retrofits all the way

• Fabian says:

  18 Oct18 October 06:51

  Given the level of moaning I’m not surprised some people feel they’ve received bad service on BA flights 😂

  HfP thanks for the update – looking forward to full service again when I fly next month

• Leslie says:

  18 Oct18 October 10:11

  About time

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