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British Airways improves short haul snacks in Economy, and makes lounge loos unisex

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The longest journey starts with a single step, so we should roll out the red carpet for banana cake.

Unfortunately I wasn’t suppied with any photographs of the banana cake, but from 9th August, the bag of pretzels you are given in the British Airways Euro Traveller cabin is being replaced with it.

If banana cake isn’t your thing, you can also choose sultana flapjack.

A320neo airbus

These are, I admit, slightly bizarre choices – I suspect chocolate cake and plain flapjack would appeal to more people – and we have still to see the portion size. I would be pleasantly surprised if it was the same size as a standard pre-packaged corner shop flapjack. I suspect neither are gluten free.

The ability to offer much else than a piece of flapjack is hampered by the reduced galley facilities on the newest short-haul aircraft, where additional rows of seats were squeezed in instead.

The trial of free tea and coffee in Euro Traveller on selected short haul routes such as Amman and Cairo may also return – it ran for a couple of weeks recently as an experiment. Whether a free cup of tea is acceptable as ‘refreshments’ on a five hour flight is a different question, but it’s better than a bottle of water and a pretzel bag.

To be fair, Royal Jordanian (to Amman) and EgyptAir (to Cairo) run long haul aircraft on these routes for anyone who wants a flat bed in Business Class or more space and full meals in Economy – and Royal Jordanian offers Avios and BA tier points to Amman too.

Flying to India?

There is good news if you are flying to Delhi or Mumbai. All cabins will now get a second hot meal during the flight.

The airline has also announced that ‘chilled snacks’ will be placed in the Club Kitchen on these routes.

IFE improvements too

British Airways has also confirmed the completion of its IFE upgrade, which has doubled the number of items available. This includes the addition of Paramount+ content and a total of 395 movies and 770 audio titles. It does seem as if BA is getting competitive in this area, at least in comparison with other European airlines.

Heading to the loo?

In toilet news (and this was not part of yesterdays announcement, but I wanted to slot it in somewhere), British Airways has made the loos in the Galleries First and Concorde Room lounges at Heathrow unisex. I’m not sure about other lounges in Terminal 3 and Terminal 5.

It never made a lot of sense to have separate male and female loos, given that none contained urinals, and it led to unnecessary queues at times. A full refurbishment of these loos remains well overdue.

Is Calum the man for the job?

How much of the above reflects the appointment of Calum Laming as Chief Customer Officer remains to be seen.

If you thought that being, say, leader of the Conservative Party or Manchester United manager was bad for job security, it is nothing compared to being the British Airways ‘Chief Customer Officer’.

The first person to hold the title was, I think, Frank van der Post. Frank joined from Jumeirah Hotels, the Dubai-based hotel group with a strong reputation for customer service. Despite being well liked in the frequent flyer community, Frank left in 2014 after four years, allegedly frustrated with not being given the money he wanted for investment.

Frank was replaced by Troy Warfield. Warfield only lasted 18 months. His appointment raised eyebrows at the time because he had no airline experience, having previously worked at Avis and Kimberley-Clark, where he oversaw Andrex in Europe.

Warfield was replaced in 2017 by Carolina Martinoli who had done a similar role at Iberia. She was later promoted to the IAG board as Chief People Officer.

Tom Stevens, previously head of airport operations for BA, picked up the customer experience mandate on an interim basis during the pandemic. He was confirmed in the role in early 2021. In early 2022, he had a sudden desire to “pursue his ambition to work overseas” to quote BA.

Let’s see what Calum can do.

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Comments (300)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • r* says:
    2 Aug2 August 09:19

    Giving out cake instead of pretzels is a massive downgrade :/

    I always wondered why they were sour cream tho, surely it wouldve been better to just have salted pretzels rather than a flavor that I expect most ppl didnt like.

    Are there any plans to have more than a single box of lindt on long haul business? Those 10 balls of chocolate for the whole cabin has always seemed comedically insufficient.

    • yorkieflyer says:
      2 Aug2 August 10:25

      I recall being given a full size box of chocs on Brussels Airlines, happy days

  • Stephen W says:
    2 Aug2 August 09:31

    The galleries first loos somehow always remind me of the NHS.

    • JK says:
      2 Aug2 August 12:05

      Agreed, strong hospital vibes every time.

    • Chris R says:
      2 Aug2 August 12:21

      This!
      It actually surprised me how un-premium a feel they have

    • His Holyness says:
      2 Aug2 August 12:30

      As do the showers…plus the CCR Cabanas.
      BA know their pax well, it’s a struggle at a certain age, and they wanted easy wipe lino.

  • JdeW says:
    2 Aug2 August 09:40

    I must admit that I don’t recall an upgrade in toilet paper quality back in 2017, when Troy Warfield joined from Andrex and took on the poisoned chalice role of Chief Customer Officer!

  • vlcnc says:
    2 Aug2 August 10:50

    I would have rather something savoury. This is not great if you are trying to avoid sugar. I think the level should be what KLM offer on short-haul in economy, I’ve always found their level in the good quality small sandwich and drink to be the bare minimum for ‘full service’ carrier.

  • Nick says:
    2 Aug2 August 11:01

    The cake bars are from a small niche producer and I think will go down well. They’re much nicer than the pretzels or crisps and the team put a lot of effort into getting and working with a good supplier.

    The toilets thing is nothing about ‘wokery’ at all, it’s entirely about managing queues. The lounge staff themselves suggested it because they noticed quite a lot of people using the ‘wrong’ one anyway when queues were imbalanced. It’s all cubicle based, if they’d never put M/F pics on them in the first place then no one would ever have whinged. (And fwiw there are plenty of studies that show people look after individual toilets better than communal ones.)

    • Andrew J says:
      2 Aug2 August 11:35

      I’ll be surprised if the cake bars are much bigger than the size of a postage stamp, but I guess the bags of pretzels contained about 6, so it’s similar.

      • Rob says:
        2 Aug2 August 11:44

        I am also betting on them being square, so about 40% of the size of one you’d buy in Tesco. Let’s see.

        • TimM says:
          2 Aug2 August 12:09

          ‘Tessellation is what BA needs’ in order to occupy the least possible space. As has been pointed out a miniature bag of Pretzels is mostly air and therefore a poor use of space. I would have preferred the choice of a small block of cheese to go with my wine, equally space-efficient, rather than the sugar-fest choice of banana cake or flapjack either of which would destroy the palette.

          • Andrew J says:
            2 Aug2 August 12:43

            Although requires refrigeration – and that’s another overhead BA will want to avoid. The cakes will I’m sure be packed with preservatives so they have a 6 month shelf-life, as fresher cakes also add to overheads.

  • BB says:
    2 Aug2 August 11:41

    Is the photo representative of what BA short haul looks like these days? It’s ghastly. Rows and rows of bland blue and grey, nothing to break up the monotony.

    Imagine being a visitor and encountering that. More suitable for Aeroflot from the Soviet era or N. Korea’s Air Koryo than a national airline of a vibrant country like Britain.

    • Rob says:
      2 Aug2 August 11:44

      It’s an Airbus-supplied photo but it shows the ‘high density’ BA layout, yes.

  • Julia says:
    2 Aug2 August 12:24

    I wore pee pants to get back from Porto when I slipped over in the ladies’ loos at the airport and broke my arm. If you don’t want to use public loos and you can get over the granny image they’re really ok.

    • Amy C says:
      2 Aug2 August 12:28

      I can hardly bring myself to ask…..are these really what I think they might be? Sometimes I think I’ve led a sheltered life (and am glad for it!).

      • Julia says:
        2 Aug2 August 13:01

        Yes they’re incontinence knickers. They gave me a few when I was in the hospital. You can’t tell is someone is wearing them under a skirt, trust me I asked EVERYONE. I went through Porto airport security, lounge, flight and disembarked without needing to use public toilets.

      • Amy C says:
        2 Aug2 August 13:08

        Oh ok, like Tena? I was aware they existed of course but far as I knew I they were more for leakage and accidents. From your first post it sounded like there was knickers made you could launch the contents of your entire bladder into and somehow they’d give the Hoover Dam a run for it’s money. I had no idea such a thing had been made. Not sure how I’d feel about eating my banana cake while sitting next to someone who is releasing their bladder into reinforced pants. Thankfully I suppose I’d never know.

        • Amy C says:
          2 Aug2 August 13:09

          *were* knickers made.

        • Julia says:
          2 Aug2 August 13:40

          Well no one wants to hear that they need them and you really can’t tell. Fortunately I’ve been able to turn this around and saved a pair for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November and another for Dubai New Years Eve. There are never enough female loos

          • Lady London says:
            2 Aug2 August 17:13

            Oh dear the secret I discovered a year ago in similar circumstances, is out.

            They’re graded Amy… you choose the level the person might need to have absorbed. Essential to have the person test them, as brands differ greatly and apparently, there are only a brand or two that actually work, Tena apparently effective but Always (made by Tampax) may do better for some. Some are even pretty.

            I’ve heard they are useful on long bus, train and car journeys as well.

            Trouble is, who wants to even think about using this kind of stuff if you don’t have to?

    • QwertyKnowsBest says:
      2 Aug2 August 12:39

      Must come back later for the responses on this one 🙄

    • S says:
      2 Aug2 August 14:13

      If I understand you correctly, you’re suggesting people wear these and intentionally urinate themselves rather than use the public facilities?

  • Jonathan says:
    2 Aug2 August 12:46

    This just highlights the complete failure of BOB that Alex Cruz gloated about when he started to wreck BA

    Although it’s unheard of around in Europe, they should’ve tried the two – tier BOB system that’s used in North American countries, where drinks (not including alcohol) and snacks are free and alcohol and hot food / sandwiches are available for purchase

    BOB was a complete failure on the ultra short routes like Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris etc. and another change to the system highlights how badly thought out and implemented Alex Cruz’s decision (or BA’s under his leadership) was in the first place

    Although BA’s BOB is the only airline that gets covered on here, it’s probably fair to say that other carriers don’t have similar problems

    • Marcw says:
      2 Aug2 August 12:59

      I’ll happily exchange the crappy crappy domestic US service. Give me the great UK/EU short/medium/long haul farez

    • Danny says:
      2 Aug2 August 15:42

      Good riddance to Señor Cruz

    • Lady London says:
      2 Aug2 August 17:16

      Give me Easyjet all day every day for inflight catering.
      So quick and efficient with lots of choice. Even on the shortest flights.

      • Peter K says:
        2 Aug2 August 19:36

        easyJet have always run out of every savoury item I can have/want by the time they get to me, even when I’m on an up front seat!

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