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@PeteM – pre-ordering for all on short haul would be quite difficult to put into effect. There is huge movement in bookings in the days before departure, including lots of last minute booking, same day change, late arriving transfer passengers or transfer and other flights brought forward. The short haul fleet is also deliberately fairly flexible so that on any given day, there can be significant aircraft changes right up to the last minute. What do you offer those who haven’t pre-ordered? At times of widespread disruption, the system would also fall apart. It would ultimately risk causing more disappointment (= complaints) than the current process.
BA don’t proactively offer water to passengers in any travel class on any flight to anywhere to save money, that’s the bottom line.
Nonsense
On every CW flight I’ve been on there has been a bottle of water somewhere in the seat area – usually in one of the storage areas
Water is always available on request if you pop up to the galley and on numerous flights I’ve been on the CC do walk down the cabin on a regular bases offering water top ups from big bottles.
@PeteM – pre-ordering for all on short haul would be quite difficult to put into effect. There is huge movement in bookings in the days before departure, including lots of last minute booking, same day change, late arriving transfer passengers or transfer and other flights brought forward. The short haul fleet is also deliberately fairly flexible so that on any given day, there can be significant aircraft changes right up to the last minute. What do you offer those who haven’t pre-ordered? At times of widespread disruption, the system would also fall apart. It would ultimately risk causing more disappointment (= complaints) than the current process.
It would clearly present some challenges, and you probably wouldn’t implement it on every route, but Jet2 manage on routes over 2:30hrs (pre-paid, but the logistics aren’t that different bar lack of connections), TAP do it on long and medium-haul flights if you’re flying in J out of Portugal, many airlines do it on long haul. In any case BA have to do it for special meals already and broadly manage.
I think most of the time it would lead to much greater customer satisfaction and yes, it would occasionally fall apart, but think people would be quite understanding.
@PeteM – you make very valid points and clearly it’s not impossible, although I’m not sure anyone does it on European short haul save for special meals and to be fair the whole of TAP (let alone narrowing to mid/long haul) is a tiny operation compared to BA. However, your point about passengers being “understanding” I’m not so sure about! The number of people here who show zero “understanding” expecting BA to be perfect or otherwise they’re firing off a complaint never ceases to amaze me. I’m quite sure their own businesses don’t get everything right all the time and they might even, shock horror, make mistakes themselves, yet they expect big complex corporations to be perfect every time…
Pre order would be a nightmare for BA but the honest truth is how can grown adults not plan for a 1-4 hour journey on a plane.
Buy your water, snack, sandwich etc in the terminal
It’s really not that difficult to get hold of the basics.Re preorder. BA struggle to get a few rows back in the time the LCC manage the whole cabin so yup would be a nightmare.
There is a real culture issue at BA and the staff don’t help themselves. I’ve seen the crew deliver fast and efficient BoB then I’ve seen the slow cba lot that are actiely trying to sabotage revenues.
Pre order would be a nightmare for BA but the honest truth is how can grown adults not plan for a 1-4 hour journey on a plane.
Buy your water, snack, sandwich etc in the terminal
Isn’t the point that people have paid 2x-3x-4x the cost of Y to fly in J, so expect a decent meal?
Even when BA did do pre ordering it still came out of the existing meal allocations for that flight with some tinkering if the ratio between options was becoming out of balance from the pre set ratios.
Don’t forget BA have far more knowledge and data on pre ordering than any of us do and all that data and experience may just show that it’s not worth offering it.
@PeteM – you are still getting a decent meal, just not necessarily precisely what you ideally wanted. BA’s CE food offering compares very favourably vs other European carriers.
If people have specific dietary needs, that’s one thing but if someone is such a fussy eater, they should make their own catering arrangements. How do they cope when they go to someone’s house and have to eat what they are given or do they write a letter of complaint in lieu of the more traditional thank you letter? How do they cope in a restaurant if something is off or a restaurant that has a no choice set menu? What will they do if they are invited to a no food choice corporate event or a State Banquet? Complain again? It’s just an entitled era gone crazy.
My wife came back from Nice a couple of weeks ago. She was in the last row of Club and there was no choice remaining, so she had what would have been her third choice – some pork dish. She said it was perfectly nice. Did she make a fuss or complain to blag some Avios? No, of course she didn’t.
The problem is that the choices are not really comparable – they tend to range from a main-course-style tasty and filling meat option to the tiny quinoa or similar salad which is neither tasty nor filling.
Even when BA did do pre ordering it still came out of the existing meal allocations for that flight with some tinkering if the ratio between options was becoming out of balance from the pre set ratios.
Even tinkering with the ratios would be preferable to what we have now – it is really difficult to excuse on long haul where other big operations manage just fine.
I agree with @JDB on this: “The number of people here who show zero “understanding” expecting BA to be perfect or otherwise they’re firing off a complaint never ceases to amaze me”
But I’m still not convinced BA would drown under a sea of complaints. HfP is a particularly tenacious subset of the travelling public so there is a bias towards activist complainants.
@PeteM – the quinoa salad was never a main dish and has now been replaced with the rather better coronation cauliflower, although that obviously doesn’t appeal to @NL! The dishes are rather different in style but so are restaurant choices. I often choose the salad option partly because I enjoy salads, but also because it’s the one they can get least wrong.
It is a conscious commercial decision by BA to offer the service they do. It is also their decision to cater down to the last passenger and not have any spare meals. It is in their DNA to cut costs wherever possible.
Likewise it is also done for environmental reasons as it cuts down on waste and makes turnaround times at outstations and at UK airports as swift as possible.
BA used to have a percentage of spare meals on board, like they used to offer brandy and like they change brands of alcohol on board and in lounges. They make the decisions on what meals and drinks are on what routes. It is down to the contracts they’ve negotiated with Do&Co and other caterers, who, while having an input to the menu suggestions, are ultimately doing what BA wants.
BA could offer pre-ordering if they wanted to. It would come with costs attached which are not limited to the reasons @JDB gives above.
The reality is they choose not to. And part of the reason they don’t is because load factors show that demand for seats in Club Europe is still there despite any cost-cutting measures. In other words as long as we customers continue paying for seats in CE things will not change. This is also why they choose to have the aircraft layout with the movable curtain. It allows flexibility and can match customer demand.
It is just part of the revenue maximising
and profit-driven culture of IAG which determines how long they sweat their assets and is why lounge refurbishment doesn’t happen and indeed lack of lounge provision at an airport is not guaranteed even if it is advertised as part of the service.Pre order would be a nightmare for BA but the honest truth is how can grown adults not plan for a 1-4 hour journey on a plane.
Buy your water, snack, sandwich etc in the terminal
It’s really not that difficult to get hold of the basics.Re preorder. BA struggle to get a few rows back in the time the LCC manage the whole cabin so yup would be a nightmare.
There is a real culture issue at BA and the staff don’t help themselves. I’ve seen the crew deliver fast and efficient BoB then I’ve seen the slow cba lot that are actiely trying to sabotage revenues.
You’d be surprised at just how difficult it can be to buy gluten-free food in airports. Add in the added complication of requiring special assistance (which I do), and more often than not you don’t actually get much of a chance to buy anything. Obviously when flying from home I can go prepared, but not always that easy abroad.
However, I did for the first time ever place an order through the BA High Life Cafe website for our return flight home from Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. They’ve added a load of GF salads for pre-order, which is ideal, and I also ordered a couple of cans of diet coke. All food and drink turned up (was a bit worried it wouldn’t, as have read on here a few reviews of it not), and was so glad I ordered the drinks, as they didn’t even bother doing the drinks trolley run on that short flight.
Our outbound flight to Munich the week before that (went on a river cruise) I was completely gobsmacked that one of the free snacks they offered round were actually gluten free (and marked on the packet as such). Nairns fruit biscuits. Usually we can’t have anything, so was very grateful for the freebie. Of course, on the way back neither was suitable as per usual!
Agree @AJA. They have a big competitive advantage over their competitors with LHR slots, slots ay other slot-constrained airports, the loyalty programme, etc.
Most of us on this forum know how to deal with the limitations of their operation, but it’s still frustrating to repeatedly witness how disappointed less seasoned passengers get when instead of a decent meal they get presented with the leftover vegan meal or no meal at all…
BA used to have a percentage of spare meals on board,
They still do for long haul.
Last time I looked into this it was 120% of expected passenger loads to allow for some spoilage and crew meals.
the airlines and hotels have figured out that there is a rising demand for their so called premium services CE/CW and hotels like six senses where people pay regardless of the value/service. Where is everyone getting the money is another issue!
There are a lot of people paying for premium service and not demanding a real premium product or service so why bother.
the airlines and hotels have figured out that there is a rising demand for their so called premium services CE/CW and hotels like six senses where people pay regardless of the value/service. Where is everyone getting the money is another issue!
There are a lot of people paying for premium service and not demanding a real premium product or service so why bother.
You are right about some hotel guests not having a clue which allows hotels to get away providing a poor service – you only have to read OTT reviews of how luxurious the hotel was because someone opened the door and a porter carried their bags to the room. Six Senses is a particularly egregious example of selling out to a mass market chain, over expanding, over charging and no quality control; they will reap what they sow in due course. Fortunately, there are still plenty of good hoteliers out there who understand and respect luxury.
With BA or any European legacy airline, on their short haul operations, it’s slightly different – they are basically loss making but they need to offer a product that’s a bit better than LCCs, yet not too expensive to provide so I see it as somewhat similar to the adage attributed to Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister: the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.
I bet coronation cauliflower wasn’t served at Versailles 😂
I bet coronation cauliflower wasn’t served at Versailles 😂
On the basis that coronation sauce was created for the coronation of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, you are correct. I take it you haven’t visited the Harrods Vegetable Butchery counter to buy provisions to take north!
You are correct, @JDB, the very thought of how much a cauliflower might cost at Harrods is too much for my Northern sensibilities. Isn’t it rather vulgar these days, though? A few years ago two of our local OCG members were busted for money laundering partly by being caught on CCTV spending a large amount of cash there. These people are not known for their discernment and good taste.
You are correct, @JDB, the very thought of how much a cauliflower might cost at Harrods is too much for my Northern sensibilities. Isn’t it rather vulgar these days, though? A few years ago two of our local OCG members were busted for money laundering partly by being caught on CCTV spending a large amount of cash there. These people are not known for their discernment and good taste.
Yes indeed, Harrods would be considered pretty infra dig these days in polite company. The vegetable butchery is a symptom of its nonsense. It was once a great shop for all sorts of things and actually no more expensive than other stores for many things. Its vans delivered essentials weekly to my parents and many others in the country where exotica like olive oil, proper coffee or smoked eel were difficult to find at that time. In the last ten years I think I have only visited to buy large blinis (oddly difficult to buy and not so easy to make well) and my wife gets Kanebo products from them online as it is the only stockist in the UK.
You are correct, @JDB, the very thought of how much a cauliflower might cost at Harrods is too much for my Northern sensibilities. Isn’t it rather vulgar these days, though? A few years ago two of our local OCG members were busted for money laundering partly by being caught on CCTV spending a large amount of cash there. These people are not known for their discernment and good taste.
Was that the group who were carting binbags full of cash to Harrods or am I thinking of a different case?
Why do I need a bottle of water when I’ve just come straight from the lounge where I had as much water as I wanted, and I’ll be offered a drink within 30 minutes of take off? I don’t want water out of a plastic bottle, anyway – the smell of the plastic is really quite unpleasant.
And why do I need a choice of meal when all the options on the menu are perfectly acceptable? Friends never offer me a choice of meal when I’m out for dinner. Wedding guests are rarely given a choice. Business functions normally have a set menu, too. Why should I expect more when trapped inside a metal tube several miles above the earth? It’s not as of the crew can pop out to the Coop for extra supplies.
Why fly BA at all when Ryanair is much cheaper, eh, jj?
I didn’t know Señor Slasher Cruz was on the forum?
Why do I need a bottle of water when I’ve just come straight from the lounge where I had as much water as I wanted, and I’ll be offered a drink within 30 minutes of take off?
Why do you think because *you* don’t want something, nobody else should have it? My OH and I had to run through BCN airport after a 2 hour wait in the passport queue last year and had no time to lounge. We were desperate for water as soon as we boarded.
Plenty of people would benefit from choosing a meal and having a drink of water. I don’t get why people would disagree.
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